For the past couple months I have been researching disaster recovery for E2K and one thing i learned is that its not easy. I was wondering what procedures you guys have in case your server goes down? We have about 180 users on one exchange server. we have 2 domain controllers with one being the GC. About 80% of the people could do without email if it went down for the day. However we have one dept that wines when it takes more than a second to open a 20mb file attachement. Is there software that will allow me to create an exact duplicate of our current server? We have an identical box hardware wise. I was also contemplating taking the current email server offline (on a weekend) and then just installing exchange server on an identical box hardware wise and restoring data from a backup but i didnt know what would happen to AD if i did another exchange installation. The drives that we have on the servers are SCSI raid controllers so the mirroring software would have to be able to detect them. If anyone has any suggestions that would be great. I am also curious as to what procedures you all have in case your server goes down. Thank you for the help and info.
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Backup and recovery question
- Thread starter mikesid
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I do not believe that you can do a real time replica of exchange. Our method for having a backup is using Veritas software to backup the full exchange information store while it is running and if the server happened to go down, restore that backup onto either the rebuilt server, or a seperate server.
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- #3
When you do a restore would you have to install exchange server, and then restore or would you already have exchange on the system with the storage groups and stores?
What I was hoping to do would be to install exchange on another server (with the same name)and identical storage groups and stores. That way if for some reason we felt that we could not get the production server up and running in a reasonable amount of time we could turn the stanby server on and they would be able to send and receive email. They wouldnt have any current email of course but at least they would be able to send and receive until we got the production one back up and running. the problem is if we wait until that happens if we dont have exchange installed we would have to take the hour or two and install exchange, setup identical storage groups and stores. I was hoping to be able to literally unplug the bad server plug in the standy server, send everyone an email (to activate there mailboxes) and let them send and recieve. I would like to install exchange on a different box with the same name and groups but i dont know if that will mess up my current installation of exchange.
What I was hoping to do would be to install exchange on another server (with the same name)and identical storage groups and stores. That way if for some reason we felt that we could not get the production server up and running in a reasonable amount of time we could turn the stanby server on and they would be able to send and receive email. They wouldnt have any current email of course but at least they would be able to send and receive until we got the production one back up and running. the problem is if we wait until that happens if we dont have exchange installed we would have to take the hour or two and install exchange, setup identical storage groups and stores. I was hoping to be able to literally unplug the bad server plug in the standy server, send everyone an email (to activate there mailboxes) and let them send and recieve. I would like to install exchange on a different box with the same name and groups but i dont know if that will mess up my current installation of exchange.
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- #5
From what i have read if an exchange server goes down it disconects the user from the mailbox. Once you get the storage groups back up you can reactivate there mailbox by sending a message to it. then they just log onto outlook. And to let them know we will just announce over the paging system "you guys can log back in". 
There are some third-party people who have software for real-time backups now that i went to google and did a search for it. here is one website.
As for the way we do it, is there is a major problem with the server for us, and can not be fixed in a timly fashion, we would try to get the mdb files off for the information store and then run the restore from the veritas software and mount the old mdb file, so our email would be out for 1 full day. Since nothing really bad has happened to us, we cant get the funds to purchase a spare computer for email but thats a different subject.
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As for the way we do it, is there is a major problem with the server for us, and can not be fixed in a timly fashion, we would try to get the mdb files off for the information store and then run the restore from the veritas software and mount the old mdb file, so our email would be out for 1 full day. Since nothing really bad has happened to us, we cant get the funds to purchase a spare computer for email but thats a different subject.
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- #7
Fortunately we have a spare and i am trying to find out how to use it the best way. I wish i could ghost it or something. The problem with realtime backup is if the data corruption gets to the mirrored data, then it is of no use. I would just like an identical box with either old emails or a blank database so that i could at least get them emails in and out. I would like this ready to go instead of having to create it on the fly. What can you do, no one said this was easy
thanx for the tips.
thanx for the tips.
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- #9
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- #10
What if i install another exchange server with a different name and attach it to our current site? Would it have all the email messages from our first exchange server in case the first one dies or something? We have 3 locations and we could keep it at another location because we are also concerned that if something happens to the site where the exchange server is held (fire, flood or in our case hurricanes <yes i am in florida>) we could either point everything to the second exchange server or rename it (if that is possible).
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
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