Roger and Jeff, I am also interested in the problems you encountered. We are in the process of implementing a Dell/EMC solution. I currently have a test bed up and running and have seen no problems yet.
Thanks Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Roger Seielstad [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 9:30 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Exchange 2000 Recovery Really? Care to share the experiences? I'm actively specing out Dell/EMC gear for a project and anything I know ahead of time will help. Offlist is fine, too. ------------------------------------------------------ Roger D. Seielstad - MCSE Sr. Systems Administrator Inovis - Formerly Harbinger and Extricity Atlanta, GA > -----Original Message----- > From: Edgington, Jeff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 9:01 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > Actually... most of the problems were a result of the SAN and it's > failures. Of the 5 sites that had this type of SAN, 4 had problems. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Roger Seielstad [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 8:00 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > I'd call that more of a good reason not to use clusters. > > ------------------------------------------------------ > Roger D. Seielstad - MCSE > Sr. Systems Administrator > Inovis - Formerly Harbinger and Extricity > Atlanta, GA > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Tony Hlabse [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 10:04 PM > > To: Exchange Discussions > > Subject: Re: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > > > > Good advertisement to not use Dell. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Edgington, Jeff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "Exchange Discussions" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 9:41 PM > > Subject: RE: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > > > > I'm the poor schmuck that became VERY practiced at doing > recoveries in > > this domain. We were initially told to move from three E5.5 > > servers to > > 1 clustered Dell SAN. My first comment was 'what if this > unbreakable > > setup breaks in a way that the diagnostics on the SAN > doesn't detect a > > problem... I'll end up with 8700 people without e-mail'... > I was told > > "that can't happen"... well, it did... I did at least 6 > > recoveries in a > > 12 month span with 2 being all 8700 mailboxes and the others > > being 4300 > > each time. This FINALLY convinced the people with money that this > > wasn't a smart strategy and they finally allowed me to move > > back to the > > 'many small servers' approach that I prefer... yes, I take a > > hit on SIS > > (8700 mailboxes on currently 6 production servers... I'm backing up > > 200GB nightly.. full backups)... since our move back to > off-the-shelf > > (but MS HCL hardware) servers, we've had no outages. Those > in our org > > that are still using the Dell/Cluster approach continue to > experience > > constant problems. > > > > John is a little off with his description... this is our current > > approach and it seems to work very well in my test restores. > > (this was > > developed during my nightmare, er experience with the > > recoveries of last > > year). > > > > We keep an offline restore domain that contains our recovery > > servers... > > these same servers are the target for my backups of the production > > servers... this way in the case of a restore I am running > the restore > > from the local drive on the recovery server as opposed to over the > > network or from tape (we backup to files on hard drive). > We also dump > > VIP mailboxes to PST files nightly (perl script that uses > > exmerge... 93 > > mailboxes) > > > > Restore steps with our config... this is based on a couple MS > > whitepapers... I can dig them up if anyone is interested (don't > > remember the titles) > > > > 1. production db or sg goes down. > > > > 2. determine if the db/sg can be remounted without data > > loss... if not, > > continue. > > > > 3. copy production TLOGS to a safe location on the recovery > > server for > > that production server. > > > > 4. reset the dbs on the production server so that the > people on these > > dbs now at least have mail service back (empty mailboxes) > > > > 5. Start restore of dbs on the recovery server. (making > sure not to > > checkmark 'last backup' or 'mount db'... start exmerge of VIP > > mailboxes > > back into the reset mailboxes on the production server. > > > > 6. Once the restore completes, copy the production TLOGS into the > > templog dir and run eseutil /cc against the location that has the > > restore.env file (templog location).... this now gets your > restored db > > back to the point in time just before the crash. > > > > 7. Mount the restored db on the recovery server to make sure all is > > well... if so, dismount and copy this restored db back to the > > production server as a different name (priv1.edb.rst for example) > > > > 8. Once all restored dbs are copied to the production > > server, dismount > > the reset dbs and rename them. (mark them for overwrite)... > > now rename > > the restored dbs back to their original names. > > > > 9. Mount the restored dbs on the production server.. your users now > > have their original mailboxes (rules, permissions and all) but are > > missing the mail that delivered in the time between (4) and (9). > > > > 10. Copy the reset dbs to the recovery server and mount them there. > > > > 11. Exmerge out the last 24 hours of the mailboxes on the reset dbs > > (that are now on the recovery server). > > > > 12. Exmerge the PSTs from (11) back into the production servers.... > > recovery complete. > > > > > > > > jeff e. > > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Roger Seielstad [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 2:54 PM > > To: Exchange Discussions > > Subject: RE: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > > > > I'm more interested in how often he has hardware failures. It sounds > > like a common event! > > > > ------------------------------------------------------ > > Roger D. Seielstad - MCSE > > Sr. Systems Administrator > > Inovis - Formerly Harbinger and Extricity > > Atlanta, GA > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > > Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 3:45 PM > > > To: Exchange Discussions > > > Subject: Re: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > > > > > > > Doesn't play hell with your SIS? > > > > > > On 1/8/03 13:20, "John W. Luther" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > Hey. > > > > > > We have multiple small exchange servers that do their backups > > > to recovery > > > servers that have several mirrored drives so no single > > > production server has > > > any of its backups on the same drive mirror. With our > > > database size limit > > > we have one recovery server for every three mail servers. In > > > addition we > > > have at least one "hot spare" mail server. > > > > > > When there is an outage we note which folks are affected and > > > then recreate > > > their (now empty) mailboxes on the recovery server to get > > > them back into > > > email. We then Exmerge the backed-up mail out of the backups > > > into the new > > > mailboxes. Some tlog juggling has to be done in order to > > > recover all mail, > > > but it is fairly strait forward. > > > > > > Each of our servers costs ~6K using "off the shelf" > > > components. We learned > > > the value of lots of small servers when our Dell PowerEdge > > > equipment crapped > > > out on us repeatedly early last year. > > > > > > You could probably do this with three servers, then. One > > > for production, > > > one for recovery/backups and one hot spare. Under your > > limit, though? > > > Well, I guess that would depend on your shopping ability and > > > the components > > > you choose. > > > > > > John > > > > > > John W. Luther > > > Systems Administrator > > > Computing and Information Services > > > University of Missouri - Rolla > > > > > > At 11:02 AM 1/8/2003 -0800, Newsgroups wrote: > > > >I am not aware of a budget but when I mentioned the > solution from > > > >"Marathon Technologies" they almost fell off their chairs. > > > I think they > > > >want to spend somewhere from $3k to $7K (Not sure, as they > > > have not told > > > >me anything). I told them that for that price the best > > > thing they could > > > >do is have another server and do a daily restore of the > > > database on that > > > >box and if the main server dies put up the new one instead. > > > What do you > > > >think? Any other ideas? > > > > > > > >Thanks > > > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > > >From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > > >Posted At: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 10:48 AM > > > >Posted To: Exchange Newsgroups > > > >Conversation: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > >Subject: Re: Exchange 2000 Recovery > > > > > > > >Seamless, transparent, automatic and cheap? Don't believe > > > such a high > > > >availability solution exists. Even overspeccing a single box > > > to ensure > > > >it's > > > >fully redundant gets rather expensive on a per user basis > > > for only 180 > > > >users. What are the actual requirements surrounding the > > solution and > > > >what > > > >budget has been proposed to implement it? > > > > > > > >On 1/8/03 12:27, "Newsgroups" > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >We are looking into different methods of recovery from > > > Exchange 2000. I > > > > > > > >know there are several ways of doing this. We want to > be able to > > > >recover w/ out any user interaction (by that we mean it would be > > > >transparent to them and they don't want to be down for 4 to > > > 6 hours). > > > >We have about 180 users. I know we can cluster them but > > > they don't want > > > > > > > >to go that route because of the cost. Will software or hardware > > > >replication work and be transparent or are there any other > > > technologies > > > >that you may be aware of? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ > > > >List posting FAQ: > http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > > >Archives: > http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > > >To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > >Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ > > > >List posting FAQ: > http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > > >Archives: > http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > > >To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > >Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > > List posting FAQ: > http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > > Archives: > http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > _________________________________________________________________ > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
