Need help figuring out a mirrored server solution

[backlund]

Need some help figuring this out. I have a few small banks running on terminal servers in our office. We would like to find a better redundanct solution in case the terminal server goes down. Currently, we are just running basic backups and a raid 5 config, but if the mobo goes out, per say, we are screwed until a new one comes in. What we would like to do is find a way to mirror servers identically. It does not and probably should not be a real time solution, as the backup server would be stored in a different location. Preferrably we would rather have it run the sync every night. I have found numerous pieces of software that mirror files, but nothing that actually seems to mirror the registry, etc. Since this is a terminal server we have numerous applications installed that rely on the registry. Simply copying the files won't work. I don't have to have this system be an instant fail over either. If we can figure out a way to make this work and have the bank up and running within an hour or two, this would satisfy our goals (and the FDIC's ;-)

 

[backlund]

I forgot to mention that clustering is out of the question as the small banks won't pay for enterprise edition, and we don't want to have to upgrade all the servers we already have.

 

[mrdenny]

There is software out there that can replpicate your server to an offsite cold server. No like hardware or shared storage etc required. I'm looking through my email for the name of the company, but I can't find it. If I can find it I'll post it.

I know that one piece of software is double take, there are others however.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[NickFerrar]

I think Veritas do a decent copy product, if you're running TS though can't you just add more servers to the farm to create redundancy (and improve performance)? You're still screwed if a fire happens but then do you have redundant links to your other location anyway?

 

[backlund]

That requires clustering, in which windows enterprise edition is needed. They don't want to pay for it, and we don't want to have to upgrade all their servers to it.

 

[NickFerrar]

Hmm well not really done much with MS TS but Citrix doesn't require clustering, it's more like NLB than server clustering.