Mail server architecture - redundancy

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.

paradigm · 21 Oct 2010 at 14:13

We have an off-site edge transport server and mailbox server that is part of a DAG. In the unlikely event that we lose both connections to the main office, our setup at the datacenter takes over.

Has worked well for testing.

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.

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.

#Chri5# · 21 Oct 2010 at 15:52

Have you looked at a hosted Exchange service?

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.

paradigm · 21 Oct 2010 at 16:41

Burnsy2023 said:
We still need access to recent mail though.

You could quite easily manage that through means of SMTP and filtering, but it would have to be a catchall type scenario. Keep a copy separate ready to re-distribution to exchange upon restoration of systems/connectivity.

DRZ · 21 Oct 2010 at 16:46

Another MessageLabs type suggestion that I have personally used in the past would be Maildistiller.

It is a fair bit cheaper than ML and has the functionality you are after.

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:

HungryHippos · 25 Oct 2010 at 18:07

Burnsy2023 said:
Yes, the idea was eventually rejected for various reasons.

Working within the Hosted Exchange business myself, what reasons did you have to reject it?

It pretty much covers what you need without you having to worry about actually running any servers for your mail.