Setting up a local Exchange server
We have one Exchange 2003 Enterprise Server SP2 in the main office. Users in other locations will access their mailbox via a VPN connection. The response times is quite slow for the VPN users. I would like to be able to store their mailboxes locally in a local Exchange server. Additionally, if the local server fails I would like for them to be able to use the main Exchange server as a backup. Is this possible?
you would need to use a third-party clustering solution in order to do what you want
I would look at WANSyncHA for Exchange, - yes, it's unfortunatly been bought by CA, but it does what it says on the tin and would provide you with the functionality you are after (no, I don't work for CA :)
I would look at WANSyncHA for Exchange, - yes, it's unfortunatly been bought by CA, but it does what it says on the tin and would provide you with the functionality you are after (no, I don't work for CA :)
ASKER
Thanks for your advice. I think you are right in that it is best to go for a second Exchange server with high fault tolerance rather than having to go for some sort of clustering. Can you point me at some good documentation on setting up a second Exchange server for specific mailboxes.
It's easy
1.set up new exchange box as a member server of the existing org
2. use ADUC to move the mailboxes of the people you want hosted on that sever across to it
3.?????
4. PROFIT!
The only question is how long the mailbox move would take across your wan, but if you aren't moving that many mailboxes, and they aren't gigantically huge, it's not going to take all that long.
1.set up new exchange box as a member server of the existing org
2. use ADUC to move the mailboxes of the people you want hosted on that sever across to it
3.?????
4. PROFIT!
The only question is how long the mailbox move would take across your wan, but if you aren't moving that many mailboxes, and they aren't gigantically huge, it's not going to take all that long.
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ASKER
Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction. I will start testing all this on our test network.
The first part is possible. You'd get a second Exchange Server and install it into the second office. You then move the mailboxes of users in the second office to their local Exchange Server. Their connection in Outlook would then be direct to their local server, and the Exchange server communicates back to the head office over the VPN connection.
Configuring resilience in that users in each office are 'backed up' on the other Exchange Server becomes much more difficult and would require some form of cluster. For smaller deployments, you'd be looking at a DoubleTake license to do such clustering. Alternatively, if you upgraded to Exchange 2007, you could gain some clustering using SCR (Standby Continuous Replication), although you don't get the automated failover with this approach.
For the majority of deployments, high up-time can still be achieved without spending out on an Exchange cluster. If Exchange is installed on suitable hardware with redundancy features (redundancy power supplies, correct RAID arrays and so on), you can achieve VERY high uptime without the added cost of installing and maintaining a cluster.
-Matt