"Drain stopping" an Exchange 2010 CAS array w/o user getting prompts.

@perrdiddy - I have not been able to find a succesful way to "drainstop" our CASs so that we can perform maintenance on them without users noticing. I have all but given up hope.

 

We work on them in the middle of the night so that most users are reconnected by the time the get to work in the morning. We have users working 7x24 365 accross the nation as that is our business, so we always impact someone with this maintenance.

 

 

@John Matlock - AFAIK our sessions have an 8 hour timeout for MAPI traffic, as that's what the client expects by default, so I don't know why they are staying connected for more than 24 horus as in theory they should switch to another CAS at some point. We are a 7x24 shop as well, but we like to avoid staying up late and working in the middle of the night if at all possible.

 

 

Essentially I don't think this is fixable until we go to Exchange 2013 where all the clients talk HTTPS to the CAS array exclusively (MAPI is dead except for internal Exchange server communication).