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How to setup a failover/replication server

Hello experts,

We are trying to setup a failover environment in our office for disaster recovery or hardware problems.

Currenlty we have one SBS 2003 unit which is the DC and runs Exchange (In the process of migrating to EBS or SBS 2008), two server standard 2003 (one runs SQL and a few apps, and the other is file storage), and one server 2008 Standard running terminal services.

I know that in order to setup a cluster we have to upgrade all of our servers to Datacenter or Enterprise, and have identical hardware on the units (which we don't have).

What will be the most cost-effective way of achieving this?
Will DFS work?
I've also read about Double-Take, and was wondering about Hyper-V or VMware.

Your input is appreciated.

Mike Kline

SBS doesn't support clustering but you can add another domain controller to your network that would provide another AD box for you. Generally you like to have a DC on a dedicated box (virtual or hardware) but I've seen small shops run AD and file services on the same box (they could not buy another box)
Thanks
Mike

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qf3l3k

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montekane

ASKER

I read about Exchange 2007 CCR, and it sounds like another viable solution, CCR runs on Datacenter right? If that's the case we could migrate to a Datacenter or Enterpise edition if that makes things easier.

Any recommendations for SQL failover?

Thanks.

qf3l3k

That is correct. CCR works on Enterprise version, so if you have budget for that I would go for CCR. It works for us perfectly. We've tested it during production hours and Outlook dropped connection only for about 10-15 seconds.

For SQL server you have few options as well :)

If you don't have SAN or any kind of storage which can be connected to both servers same time then:
- Database mirroring
- Database Logshipping

Both technologies are based on transferring transaction logs from production server to standby and recovering changes on standby database.
In case of failure standby recent logs will be restored on database and database will become read-write production database.

Difference between those 2 is that database mirroring is done by SQL Server engine and Database logshipping is done by SQL Server Agent as scheduled jobs, so I think more reliable would be to go with Database mirroring.

Using one of those two solutions you can have production database for entering a data and standby database for reporting as this database remains read-only until failure happens.

If you have SAN then you can go with normal cluster solution as for cluster you have to share same storage space physically connected to both servers.

montekane

ASKER

Thanks for all your help.