Deon Lubbe
asked on
SBS Server 2008 recovery - Redundant server
Hi guys
Please can you shed some light for me on a current situation I have.
I have a client in a remote African country where support is very limited.
I have the following environment :
1 SBS server 2008 premium running exchange mail 2007 and about 150GB's total user and data shares being backed up daily using Backup Exec 2010 with a system recovery snapshot every Sunday. We make a daily backup at 12 pm mindnight which runs for approximately 12 hours including verification.
I have installed a secondary server which does DNS etc but this has proven not to be any sort of failover to rely on as it doesnt have exchange and is also server standard.
My question is how can one have another fully redundant backup SBS server, running as a full blown copy of my SBS 2008 server so that in the event of server crash we can immediately swop over to the second server. Is this possible? I am concerned that if my backup takes so long every day how long will recovery to otehr hardware take should it crash.
Has anyone ever ventured into this type of backup scenario?
Many thanks
Please can you shed some light for me on a current situation I have.
I have a client in a remote African country where support is very limited.
I have the following environment :
1 SBS server 2008 premium running exchange mail 2007 and about 150GB's total user and data shares being backed up daily using Backup Exec 2010 with a system recovery snapshot every Sunday. We make a daily backup at 12 pm mindnight which runs for approximately 12 hours including verification.
I have installed a secondary server which does DNS etc but this has proven not to be any sort of failover to rely on as it doesnt have exchange and is also server standard.
My question is how can one have another fully redundant backup SBS server, running as a full blown copy of my SBS 2008 server so that in the event of server crash we can immediately swop over to the second server. Is this possible? I am concerned that if my backup takes so long every day how long will recovery to otehr hardware take should it crash.
Has anyone ever ventured into this type of backup scenario?
Many thanks
Chris Millard
I don't think that this is possible with SBS because you can only have one domain controller.
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ASKER
Isnt there someway that I can have another server, running say Server 2008 with Hyper V on it or some sort of virtualization so that if my SBS goes down, we can take a snapshot (or virtual SBS 2008 copy) and run it to take over? How would one go about to do this?
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You could change your backup/restore software. Options like DoubleTake, ShadowProtect, or a HeroWare device would get you closer to your goal. The first two would still be cold backups, but restore quickly and can even be started as VMs in a pinch for near immediate uptime. The latter causes more replication traffic, but has a more automated fail-over story.
None of the above replaces the need for off-site backups though. These would be part of a larger DR plan.
Alternatively, you could set up a virtualization cluster (2+ node Hyper-V cluster, for example) connected to centralized storage such as a small SAN. You could then have true HA should a single node fail. Again, not a replacement for DR, but provides more fault tolerance for local failures.
-Cliff
None of the above replaces the need for off-site backups though. These would be part of a larger DR plan.
Alternatively, you could set up a virtualization cluster (2+ node Hyper-V cluster, for example) connected to centralized storage such as a small SAN. You could then have true HA should a single node fail. Again, not a replacement for DR, but provides more fault tolerance for local failures.
-Cliff
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Snapshotting a domain controller is always a bad idea. Snapshotting your ONLY DC is even worse. Don't do it.
-Cliff
-Cliff
You can close the Q by selecting the cited answers. :)
Thanks,
Philip
Thanks,
Philip
ASKER
Thanks for this input guys, I am looking into Double take or similiar software. I'd hate to say but Im not skilled enough yet to install the clustering etc.
I was hoping to find a simple way of recovering from disaster such as the server motherboard dying etc.
I have already spent sooo much on backup exec, remote agents, exchange agents, etc etc. It just doesnt seem practical to restore quickly with BE. The daily backups and veriifications take almost 8 hours. 8 Hours to restore a server and still deal with driver issues etc is a disaster to this organization. Surely there must be an easier way to have a backup server?
I was hoping to find a simple way of recovering from disaster such as the server motherboard dying etc.
I have already spent sooo much on backup exec, remote agents, exchange agents, etc etc. It just doesnt seem practical to restore quickly with BE. The daily backups and veriifications take almost 8 hours. 8 Hours to restore a server and still deal with driver issues etc is a disaster to this organization. Surely there must be an easier way to have a backup server?