Hardware system backup solution required - any suggestions?! 1

[Mannstech]

Hi All,

I'm running SBS 2003 on one server with around fifteen users and would like to implement some sort of hardware backup solution (possibly an additional server)in case of hardware failure.

Because of SBS's limitations with regards the number of servers allowed on the network, I'm not too sure how to do this?

Has anyone got any clever ideas that would allow another server to maybe mirror the main server and would just jump in if the main server failed?

I'm open to any ideas/solutions!

Many thanks.

Mannstech

 

[ShackDaddy]

What limitations are you referring to, regarding number of servers? There's only the 75-user limitation, not a limit on other servers. You can have another server as a backup domain controller if you want, and you could back up your file data to that server. You could add that server's ip as an additional DNS server address, so that if you SBS server went down, you could turn the file backup into a real fileshare and have the users access that data there and authenticate. You'd have some complications though, as there are things built into SBS that would keep your AD environment from functioning very smoothly without the SBS server online.

SBS is built to keep most of your eggs in ONE basket though, as far as Active Directory is concerned, but with a second server as an additional domain controller, you could recover your SBS install if you had a disk crash by replacing the disk, reinstalling SBS and then doing a full directory services recovery from backup.

With an additional server, your best investment would be a solid backup solution: a file backup including Exchange-aware backups, combined with an imaging solution like Acronis.

Don't pursue the dream of a "clustered SBS".

Dave Shackelford
MCSE, CCNA, Microsoft MVP: Exchange
Shackelford Consulting

 

[Mannstech]

Hi Dave,

Many thanks for the feedback, that's great.

Re; the limitations issue, I thought it wasn't possible to have more than one server with SBS... obviously I got my facts wrong there!

Cheers.

Mannstech

 

[ShackDaddy]

Glad I could help!

Dave Shackelford
MCSE, CCNA, Microsoft MVP: Exchange
Shackelford Consulting