How to move Primary Active Manager role - Exchange 2019

Question

I have a DAG with two member servers (PRIM-EXCH and ALT-EXCH). There is one witness server (witness server is not an exchange server) for the DAG. Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup | FL command states ALT-EXCH is the Primary Active Manager. ALT-EXCH does not have any database copies on it and is currently at HQ site so 7 static journal DBs, one active Journal DB and one active mailbox DB can be replicated over to it over the LAN. After all the static DBs are copied over and the 2 active DBs are replicated over and in sync, the ALT-EXCH server will be taken to an alternative NOC, given a new IP address and will be used strictly as an alternative exchange server (in the event PRIM-EXCH goes down.) The two servers will remain in the DAG with continuous replication running across the two different subnets.

Because I only have two servers (and a witness server) I am using Datacenter Activation Coordinator (DAC mode) - as Microsoft recommends.

I am thinking PRIM-EXCH needs to have the Primary Active Manager role as this will remain in the same subnet with the Witness server and it is our primary Exchange server. Is my thinking correct? And if so, how do I move the PAM to PRIM-EXCH and SAM to ALT-EXCH?

Please advise.

Thank you,

Answer 1

Hi @Catherine Jaszewski ,
The PAM role is held by whichever server holds quorum, so it can be any of the two servers in the DAG.
There is typically no need to move the PAM to another server except during maintenance ( CU security updates etc..)
It will move automatically if the quorum holder is rebooted.

You can use powershell from one of the servers in the DAG and move to the other server anytime you want, there is no client or server impact:

Get-ClusterGroup “Cluster Group” | Move-ClusterGroup –Node <Other DAG Member>  

What you don't need to do is force one of the servers to hold the PAM role. It can live anywhere - on either server - even if the FSW is in the other datacenter.