Cluster/High Availability Advice NEEDED 1

[2marshall8]

I work for a non-profit that relies on donations for much of our computer hardware infrastructure. WE recently received 2 HP DL380 G3's that are each loaded with 2x72 GB Ultra 320 SCSI drives and 4x146 GB Ultra 320 SCSI drives.

Now that I've given a little background on the situation let me explain what I would like to do. My plan is to use these in a clustered/high availability environment or in a load balanced environment. Either way I want to make it so that all the exchange services are always providing service in case one of the servers goes down. In other words I want 100% uptime.

To obtain this I figured that I would need a SAN that each server could hook into so that the data is centralized and can be accessed in a moment if one server goes down. This would obviously cost extra. I've breifly looked into this route and found that there is hardware like the MSA1000 or MSA500 that can provide this central storage using Fiber or SCSI. If I have to go this route I will but if I can use the existing two servers with all their space and eliminate the central SAN storage and still provide this 100% uptime I would definitely go this route.

My question is: Would it possible to only use these two identical DL 380's with all their existing storage and provide 100% uptime/failover for exchange? Do I need to have a SAN in order to accomplish this with Exchange 2003? Any advice would be appreciated

thanks

 

[58sniper]

In Exchange 2003, you can only use Single Copy Clustering, which requires both be connected to the same storage with qualifying HBAs. You cannot have email dedicated storage on each like you can in Exchange 2007.

Once that's established, you can create your Windows cluster and then install Exchange.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[Zelandakh]

You can use a DAS with 2 inputs like Dell PowerVaults instead of a SAN tohugh Exchange 2007 with CCR would be much easier.

 

[2marshall8]

thanks for the advice. Highly appreciated.

 

[Zelandakh]

If you can go with 2007, you can use that forum on here to check your plans.

 

[2marshall8]

I would but my hardware is 32 bit. 2007 requires 64

 

[Zelandakh]

32 bit? Yikes, that must be old stuff - thought EM64T phased out 32 bit hardware in about 2002.