Exchange Disaster Recovery/Backups

ZuG · 14 Sep 2009 at 16:45

Hi,
We run exchange 2007 in our office. However, I have now been given the task of having a DR system/process that will allow users to have their mail again in a couple of hours should the building get blown up, get burned down etc etc.
We have colo hosting in a couple of DCs around the country so I want to have exchange here in the office and somehow backed up to a hot spare in one of our DCs (we just backup the server at the moment to a file, so recovery maybe lengthy)
Would it be better to run Virtualised servers (performance issues) or possibly run something that constantly syncs the two exchange servers?

Has anybody done something similar before?
Thanks,
Mark

ZuG · 14 Sep 2009 at 17:18

we have about 3mb link to our DC...

Is there a Microsoft way of doing it?

ZuG · 15 Sep 2009 at 10:47

I think CCR maybe the way to go. I have a ping of around 18ms to our DC.. Will this be enough? Other than another licence for Exchange, would I need to purchase any more CALs(I assume not)?

ZuG · 15 Sep 2009 at 11:27

urgh, it seems I need Windows Server Enterprise licences and Exchange enterprise licences... Sounds expensive.

ZuG · 15 Sep 2009 at 12:52

It's an option. However, I wouldn't like to copy an image of the mail server over our internet line every day or week really as it would be too big. I am more of a Linux person so I am unsure of the best practices for Windows, but is there an rsync equivelant that would only copy the parts of virtual image that has changed?
Thanks,
Mark

ZuG · 16 Sep 2009 at 12:26

our current thinking is to run hyper V with Exchange 2007. Then connect this to some sort of SAN (May look at openfiler?) and use iscsi for the data storage...

We should then be able to backup the OS once a day or even less and rsync the SAN over to our offsite backup storage(possibly another san...)

Any thoughts?

ZuG · 16 Sep 2009 at 13:38

Yea but I wont be able to get the budget for a 20k SAN, or possibly even 2 of them, one at each site....
I need a lower cost alternative..

ZuG · 24 Sep 2009 at 20:45

we are now planning to use hyper V and virtualise exchange with it being copied daily to our other DC incase of DR.. Would you say this a good way to go?
Would it be better to use something to just copy the exchange datastore or the whole os? I have not used double take, you say it's not that reliable but is there something better?