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It's a given that you take all reasonable steps to secure and harden Exchange so as to mitigate risk, and clustering is a big step. &nbsp;The best disaster recovery option is to never have a true disaster. &nbsp;However, as a customer of mine found out when Katrina hit one of their Exchange sites last year, not all risk can be mitigated. &nbsp;Dial-tone recovery is definitely a worst-case scenario option, and should only be implemented where justified by the potential risk. &nbsp;With readily-available virtual server infrastructure, however, it's pretty easy to implement and can dramatically cut downtime even when a whole physical site is down. &nbsp;
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It's a given that you take all reasonable steps to secure and harden Exchange so as to mitigate risk, and clustering is a big step.  The best disaster recovery option is to never have a true disaster.  However, as a customer of mine found out when Katrina hit one of their Exchange sites last year, not all risk can be mitigated.  Dial-tone recovery is definitely a worst-case scenario option, and should only be implemented where justified by the potential risk.  With readily-available virtual server infrastructure, however, it's pretty easy to implement and can dramatically cut downtime even when a whole physical site is down.  

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What are they, &nbsp;we have a cluster and backups, and a previous question i asked pointed out there is no replication of mailboxes available.<br />
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I find it hard to belive that that all companies using exchange just put up with down time should a server break.<br />
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is there alternatives or do they just &nbsp;go offline whilst servers restored?<br />
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cheers<br />
<br />
windows and exchange 2003.
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What are they,  we have a cluster and backups, and a previous question i asked pointed out there is no replication of mailboxes available.

I find it hard to belive that that all companies using exchange just put up with down time should a server break.

is there alternatives or do they just  go offline whilst servers restored?

cheers

windows and exchange 2003.

Fail over Options for exchange 2003

The term "Backup" means the methods and processes involved to copy computer data (system data as well as application data) to media other than the ones where the data originally live (disk, tape, optical, cloud). "Restore" in turn means the methods and processes involved in data recovery, i. e., bringing back copied computer data to their original location. Backup/Restore primarily serves as a means of protection against data loss, be it due to disaster, corruption or sabotage. It can also be used for recovering data from an earlier point in time and even for cloning machines or applications. There is a wide variety of backup/restore software available, from expensive commercial products to free or open source tools.

Storage Software

Exchange is the server side of a collaborative application product that is part of the Microsoft Server infrastructure. Exchange's major features include email, calendaring, contacts and tasks, support for mobile and web-based access to information, and support for data storage.