Disaster Recovery Scenaril

[novachild]

I'm trying to manage a SBS 2000 server with as much effectiveness as I can, and I need some pointers. I don't have all of the book knowledge that I need, but because certain employees have left, I'm stuck with trying to sort out some things.

I've been informed that if the DC becomes unavailable (dies), Exchange 2000 databases cannot be restored to a new installation. They are tied to the SIDs of the original DC. However, one can pay a data extraction company to convert them into PSTs.

How does one prepare for this in advance so that those databases can be mounted elsewhere, or turned into PSTs on-site without spending thousands of dollars on software? Is there a way to set up a clone DC or a backup DC, so that if the primary one goes down one can switch everything over to the backup?

I know my knowledge is very limited, but I'm an excellent researcher and even the simplest advice would probably help. Thanks in advance.

 

[mikesid]

We have two DC's in my office(with one being the Global Catalog server). The AD is replicated between both of these servers. If one happens to fail we can still operate. If the Global Catalog server failed we would have to make sure to enable that option on the other DC if we had to (Exchange HAS to be able to contact a GC in order for exchange to work). Depending on what server failed you would of course have to re configure any services that were on the machine that failed (DNS, DHCP etc). Also I recomend backing up at least the system state of your machine. That way if you only had one DC and it died you could re install windows server, put whatever software you need and restore the system state. (this would be done in acive directory services recovery mode).

Remember with Exchange 2000 and AD, Exchange knows who needs a mailbox because AD tells it who does and who doesn't. If your DC died you would still have your messages because that database is on the exchange server. However you would not be able to retrive those since the DC is down and exchange doesnt know who should have access. you could also reconnect mailboxes to user accounts if they have an X on thier names in the storage group.

I know this sounds very confusing but keep in mind that AD holds ALL info about mailboxes, who gets them who doesn't, what email addresses people have, etc. And the exchange database has all the messages and attachments.

 

[Marcs41]

At least 2 articles woth checking here, go from there:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q258243

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297289

Marc
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