Front / Back End server advice required please

[DavrosDalek]

Hi

We currently run exchange on a Windows 2000 cluster with a SAN backend. We have found that if the cluster is failed from node to node that the users can loose connectivity in outlook with exchange. We would like to prevent this and make our system easier to take down for maintenence with no impact to the users, well so the users don't notice that the email was down.

Would the solution below work ?

We still want to run a windows 2000 cluster with clustered exchange as our backend. We would like to run 2 front end servers (using round robin dns) for our front end. We would like all of our users outlook clients to point to the front end servers. OWA would also be available to internal users (if required) from the front end servers.

Is this possible ? Any links or advice would be most welcome !

Cheers
Craig

 

[wallst32]

Exchange is "down" during the failover so clients will always be disconnected, with Office XP or older.

You need Outlook 2003, which is able to dynamically change from "connected" to "offline" states when configured in cached mode. If the server goes down while Outlook is connected, it will change to "offline" mode and automatically reconnect when the server comes back online.