Exchange Redundancy Question 2

[SmashX1]

In the event my Exchange Server goes down I plan on having a second server ready to go with a different computer name in the same site and organization.

In the event of an emergency I will switch everyone to the spare exchange server. Then once the original exchange server is up and running I will do a restore from Tape. I will switch everyone back to the original server. I will then use exmerge to put the new mail that came in on the spare server to the main server.

My question is this: If the main server fails instead of running around and changing everyone's mail client to a different server and then back after the restore is there a better way?

 

[dcain]

You could check out Legato Co-Standby Server. We use that to mirror our Exchange server. In the event of a failure of the primary server there will be a delay of around 5 mins while the secondary is brought on-line, virtual server names are swapped over, registry settings are moved across and then the service should be back to normal. It's worked OK in testing, but so far we've never needed to use it for real.

Once the primary is fixed you can then manually failback (if you want).

On the downside it can be tough to get running properly and has given us a few scares at times.

Hope this helps

David