Mail server architecture - redundancy

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 09:29

Currently, I have a small business setup where by mail is delivered to google apps and then collected by a POP connector to Exchange 2010.

I don't really like the way that this is done and want to find a better solution. the only hitch is, that if the office (with all the servers) burnt down, we still need business continuity. As it stands people could revert to gmail for email access. Ideally, I want our exchange server to be first for delivery, but gmail would still need to hold historical emails.

Is there either a way of getting all mail to deliver to two mail servers (on the same domain) or some way of uploading content from exchange mailboxes to google?

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 12:21

NightShadow said:
Why are you using Google Apps as the primary MX when you have Exchange in the first place?

Becuase then if we have an issue with the exchange server (DR situation), we still have serviceable email with recent messages.

NightShadow said:
Can it be setup so that Google then push email to your Exchange after receiving it rather than you manually fetching it via POP3?

I've not found a way to do this yet.

NightShadow said:
We have this sort of setup with MessageLabs but just for virus/spam filtering, they also do hosted archiving which would give you your backups.

Do you have any more information about exactly what the setup is?

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 12:59

NightShadow said:
Have you looked into hosted Exchange or even connecting clients to Google directly?

We want to keep exchange inhouse as it's integrated into loads of our systems. I'll have a look into messagelabs though.

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 13:39

Any idea on rough pricing for Mimecast? It looks good. Good enough that the price will be the deal breaker.

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 14:36

Does anyone know of any reputable companies other than Messagelabs and Mimecast for email continuity?

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 17:40

York said:
Microsoft (Forefront Online)? Postini (Google )?

Neither of those seem to do continuity.

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 18:03

York said:
It depends on what you want really. If you want an online archive of all email then both can offer that, but if you want direct webmail access to each individual email account then you'd need to look elsewhere or combine it with another solution.

Online archiving isn't my primary aim; having a redundant system is.

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2010 at 21:04

Thanks guys, all the recommendations are really appreciated.

Burnsy2023 · 21 Oct 2010 at 13:54

Yamahahahahaha said:
Mimecast will only retain emails for up to 10 years, Messagelabs will hold them indefinitely.

Might be important depending on your industry.

I hope it won't take us more than a few days at worst to get our exchange server back up, so as long as it holds about 14 days mail, I'm happy.

How does the mail get delivered from these services to the onsite exchange server?

Burnsy2023 · 21 Oct 2010 at 14:06

stoofa said:
We have major redundancy in our mail setup.

We have 4 Exchange 2010 servers actually running the databases.
DAG's are created so that each server replicates to another.
On top of this we have CAS arrays.

It's a pretty robust system with regards hardware and Exchange 2010 is rock solid too.

I'm more worried about what happens if the net connection dies. We still need continuity in that situation.

Burnsy2023 · 21 Oct 2010 at 14:26

paradigm said:
An alternative (and less license intensive) system would be to utilise something like hMail server offsite on an MX metric lower than that of your primary route. In the event of failure, the hMail server would hold all mail until it can forward it to the exchange servers.

We still need access to recent mail though.

Burnsy2023 · 21 Oct 2010 at 16:27

#Chri5# said:
Have you looked at a hosted Exchange service?

Yes, the idea was eventually rejected for various reasons.

Burnsy2023 · 25 Oct 2010 at 16:57

I'm trying to get a quote on Mimecast, does anyone know of decent resellers? It's very frustrating wanting a quote and finding very few resellers yet loads of information on how to become one :mad: