Disaster Recovery - just thiking.. 1

[snootalope]

I've been pondering a good Exchange disaster recovery plan for years now.. There just isn't a simple solution for a small office of say less then 200 people is there?

First of all, small shops can't afford the MS fee's for having Enterprise Editions of Windows to support clustering. (insane how expensive this gets)

Second, sure we can purchase a third party software to replicate our Exchange data to another site, but what's the difference between that and building a SAME NAME as the one that died server and restoring from tape? For those that have moved mailboxes between servers before, you know the server holding the mailboxxes has to be up and running for it to work, duh right!?! Well, how is "we'll just move the mailboxes to another server in the event of a disaster" if you can't even access your live Exchange server!??

Ugh, it's ridiculous.

in my mind, the ideal solution for a small shop is being able to queue your messages at the ISP level in the event your exchange server crashes. Then, forfully removing your live Exchange server from AD, bringing up a new server with the same name, restore to most current as possible, and allow the queued messages to find their new home. Will this work? Don't know. But what other choice do you have if your exchange server explodes at this very moment...

Just looking for a discussion with other SMALL SHOP exchange admins. What do you think? You gotta plan in place?

 

[xmsre]

If you build an exchange server using the /Disasterrecovery switch, it pulls the attributes from AD and recreates the server. The only things missing are the databases. If you mount, you'll get a warning and blank ones will be created. The mail queued at your ISP will begin flowing in, and users will be able to send email. All the old mail will no be available until restored. This is a basic dialtone recovery.

Now all you need is a way to take mail from a backup and stuff it back into your live environment. For that, Ontrack Powercontrols.

 

[snootalope]

So, once the new server is built using the /disasterrecovery switch and the blank store is mounted, can a restore from tape be made to the blank databases?

I'll look into this switch.. Have you ever had to use it?

 

[snootalope]

nevermind.. i found info on it. Can't believe i never knew this DR method existed. and i call my self an admin...

 

[snootalope]

One more question.. maybe you can help on this, maybe not.

When using the /disasterrecovery option, it says to configure and partition the disks exactly like the original server. No problem, however, what if one of my partitions isn't exactly the same size as one of the partitions on the original server. Now, I'm talking about a partition that was used for nothing but smtp logs. I can make the C:\ and Exchange install partitions exactly the same size, however on a backup server I have the last partition E:\ (again, only used for smtp logging) is about 15GB less in size. you think that'd be an issue?

 

[silentsam33]

Just the structure has to be the same, the size can be different. Also be sure the same OS SP/Hotfixes are installed and after you install Exchange with DR switch that you immediately apply the Exchange SP's and Hotfixes. This is very important. If you are doing a Dial-tone restore, create the Recovery Storage group. That way you can restore the production data from tape to the RSG while your users continue using the dial-toned databases. After the data is restored to the RSG, dismount both sets of databases and ensure they are in a clean shutdown state. Next you will have to switch the .edb and .stm files between dial-toned and RSG databases. Remount the databases. You swich the databases because it is much faster to switch a few database files between disks then to Exmerge the data beteen them. The finally step is to use Exmerge from the RSG to tranfer the new data created in the dial-toned databases back into the production databases. Once finshed your users will have all their data back.

 

[snootalope]

I'm not planning on using Recovery Groups, just bring back our most current tape image, which is daily thing.. so at worst we'd be losing a day of information. (I know one day is alot and we're currently weighing our options on replication)