SCR as a mid ground for LCR and SCR? 3

[Fragenstein]

Hi everyone,

A quick question regarding SCR. Could it be used as a replacement for LCR using two servers (running standard licenses of both Windows 2003/8 and 2007) in the same data center? It appears in pretty much all I have found that it would be implemented only in separate datacenters.

The reason I ask is, with the enterprise lisenses, CCR initial investment becomes prohibitive for the budget, and LCR does not offer hardware redundancy except in the case of Hard drives. I am trying to find a happy medium and wondering if this is it.

Thanks

 

[58sniper]

SCR does not provide automatic failover. It requires all manual intervention. This is just like LCR.

If you're looking for automatic failover, CCR is your only option.

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/

 

[xmsre]

SCR does get the copy to another server. Activation is a manual process.

 

[58sniper]

True - just like LCR.

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/

 

[Fragenstein]

Just so I do understand though, SCR does provide full hardware redundancy as well as storage redundancy whereas LCR only provides storage and HD redundancy, correct?

If I were to have a back up server for LCR, loaded with windows, any idea how long it would take (average) to get the 2nd server up to take the original servers place as opposed to SCR? Any experience with how long SCR's average time to recovery is once the administrator is alerted switchover is required?

Thanks to both of you for your comments so far. I am trying to avoid the Enterprise licensing and since in the past there have been downtimes of up to 4 hours, and hour or two will be acceptable if it overall saves money.

 

[58sniper]

LCR is for database failures. If you need to failover to another server, you need SCR. Enterprise w/ CCR is still the way to go. Yeah, it'll cost you $6k more than using Standard (2 x $3k), but the automatic failover is much nicer if it moves over fast enough that many users wouldn't even notice.

SCR is designed more for site resiliency. So, if your primary site becomes a smoking hole in the ground, you can manually failover to the SCR server(s), HT & CAS servers, Edge servers in your backup site. That requires redirection of the MX records, etc.

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/

 

[skotman]

Also keep in mind that if you use SCR and your clients are using anything but Outlook 2007 they will not see the server change until you either change the client config manually or push out a group policy that does it.

I just did a site fail over for Hurricane Ike and even though we never lost power, all my Outlook 2003 clients did not see that their mailbox had moved.

Other then that SCR is slick and works VERY well.

Scott Heath

http://www.scottspad.com

AIM: orange7288
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