Volume mount point support for an Exchange Server 2003 cluster on a Windows Server 2003-based system

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, volume mount points (NTFS file system junction points) are supported as a location for data storage in a clustered configuration when Exchange 2003 is installed on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise-based computer or on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter-based computer.

Mount points are not supported in the following scenarios:

• When they are used as a storage location for the Exchange 2003 binaries.
• When they are used with Exchange clusters that are running Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or earlier.
• When they are used with Windows clusters that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or earlier.

Note Only the following types of Exchange data files are supported for storage on a mount point location: Mount points are good for large clustered Exchange installations (for example, a four-node or an eight-node cluster) that cannot provide a sufficient number of drive letters to provide the best performance and reliability in disk design.

With data storage support, you can use a mount point when you create the System Attendant cluster resource. To do this, configure the mount point before you create the System Attendant resource. When the new System Attendant resource is created in Cluster Administrator, use the path of the mount point location for the location of the System Attendant.

This article discusses the supportability of mount points in Exchange 2003 only when the mount points are used with Windows Server 2003 in a clustered configuration. In versions of Windows that are earlier than Windows Server 2003, mount points cannot be configured in a clustered server configuration. This limitation does not extend to non-clustered configurations. In a non-clustered configuration, you can use mount points for Exchange 2000 or for Exchange 2003 with the following versions of Windows:

• Windows 2000 Server
• Windows 2000 Server, Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows 2000 Server, Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows 2000 Server, Service Pack 3 (SP3)
• Windows 2000 Server, Service Pack 4 (SP4)
• Windows 2000 Server, Service Pack 5 (SP5)
• Windows Server 2003

For more information about how to configure mount points on a clustered server, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: