Question

Exchange 2003 Redundancy/Replication

Asked by: Solpak

Hello People,

Have a quick query regarding redundancy/replication of an Exchange server (Exchange 2003)
We had downtime of a day due to the private information store being corrupted and as the database was so large the repair of the exchange server took almost all day..

As we were doing this the client could not send/recieve any mail..as they are very dependant on email this downtime was critical to thier business..

here comes the question of what the best option is to backup/mirror such a appliacation? and can this be done?

Im not too sure how it would work either but having a mirror of the Exchange so if the main information store, etc goes down the other would take over and they would have email? (but not mirroring exactly as this may copy corruption lol)

Any advice would be appreciated on the best practice?

Thanks

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Asked On
2009-08-10 at 06:32:51ID24639826
Topics

Email Servers

,

Exchange Email Server

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: ITlordPosted on 2009-08-10 at 06:38:52ID: 25059784

Hi,
To be honest the best bet is to use a SAN and have data replicating to a seperate partition.  In this case then it is pretty easy to get exchange backup and running as a cluster only points to the partition so once you change the drive letter to the one that has failed the store will come back online.

I suggest you look at some offsite backup software/suppliers such as www.keepitsafe.com as they can replicate the data for you using there software and you can recover will a very small amount of Down time.

Hope this helps!

 

by: MesthaPosted on 2009-08-10 at 06:46:59ID: 25059842

With Exchange 2003, I don't think you are going to achieve what you want.
With clustering you are using a single set of data on redundant hardware.
If you don't want to go down the clustering route (Which is very expensive for a small number of users) then something like DoubleTake/Never et a will mirror the data, but if there is a corruption in the database then that may well be copied across.

The closest you can get on released products is Exchange 2007 with SCR, which allows a delayed copy of the database to another server.
Exchange 2010 introduces much more in this area, but isn't due for release until the end of the year.

Personally I would be looking at why the database got corrupted. It isn't something that happens on its own, the usual causes are outside of Exchange.

Simon.

 

by: harshad1219Posted on 2009-08-10 at 07:04:24ID: 25059976

In addition to the previous posts the only thing you could have done was to use the RSG to repair the corrupted databases after mounting the production stores with a blank database so that the mailflow starts working asap.The only disadvantage to this would be that your users wont be able to access their old emails uintil the database is repaired and merged into the production database via the RSG.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824126 (How to use Recovery Storage Groups in Exchange Server 2003 )

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998947(EXCHG.65).aspx (Recovering a Mailbox Database Using a Dial Tone Database in Exchange Server 2003)

Also having a good online backup would definitely prove to be useful in such scenarios as then you dont have to spend a day or more in repairing the database.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124459(EXCHG.65).aspx (Exchange Server 2003 Daily Operations)

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-2003-Backup-Restore-NTBACKUP.html (Exchange 2003 Backup and Restore with NTBACKUP)

 

by: SolpakPosted on 2009-08-18 at 07:50:39ID: 25123837

Thanks for the input people will equally give points as each post helped me.

 

by: SolpakPosted on 2009-08-18 at 07:51:45ID: 31613700

good info

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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