Expanded a bit to give definitions of clustering and the "9's of uptime".
<http://theessentialexchange.com/blogs/michael/archive/2008/05/13/clustering -on-exchange-server.aspx> Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:51 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange Failover Product.. Clusters allow a well-managed server farm to go from 99.9% availability to 99.99% availability. Emphasis on "well-managed". Those are, quite frankly, few and far between. In most shops that I've seen, clusters actually reduce availability. These days, you can install Exchange, configure it a little bit, set up your backups, and it'll just hum along for you for months and months without requiring you to touch it. Run a patch install at 3am on Sunday morning once a month, and you're done. If you buy good hardware for the server - you'll probably not have to touch it except when a disk needs replacing. And of course, you have SMART/SCSI monitoring, so you know when that happens, you pick up a phone and order a disk, it's hot-swappable and auto-rebuild. Or you have it in inventory because e-mail is a critical service. You're done. No frickin' way you get off that easy with a cluster. It requires a LOT more care and feeding. In certain (very rare) circumstances, I can believe that that expert care and feeding is worth 0.09% increased availability. But honestly, I don't think I've EVER seen one. Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Barsodi.John [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:32 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange Failover Product.. I can understand Anti-SCC, but why would you be Anti-CCR? From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 2:17 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange Failover Product.. Yeah, well, I'm anti-cluster where Exchange is concerned. But all about recommending SCR. Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Kevin Miller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 4:49 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: OT: Exchange Failover Product.. I am all about your Direction. Exchange 2007 sounds like a much better solution, no offence to Stu. <insert self promotion bit that made me laugh> We had a customer ask us for references for an Exchange engagement today. As part of the reference package we sent them an Amazon book list. Out of 5 people on my team, four of us have published more than two books (Mostly about Microsoft Stuff) with our names as the author on them, and the fifth is working to get his first book out with his name on it. Also four of the 5 of us are MVPS. The customer seems to be ok with our references. </insert self promotion made me laugh> ~Kevinm WLKMMAS powered by 3Sharp <http://www.3sharp.com/> , Always WLKMMAS <http://www.wlkmmas.org/> What is your Zombie Plan? From: Kennedy, Jim [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:49 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange Failover Product.. Going in a completely different direction here. How about Exchange 2007 with CCR? For the price of the upgrade you get your redundancy and the upgrade. From: Chyka, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 1:50 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Exchange Failover Product.. Hi Everyone, I'm looking for a Exchange 2003 failover software product. Years ago I used Double Take at another job and wanted ot see if that was the way to go. Basically I want to put another exchange server at another site and have that box take over if the main exchange server ever goes down or has issues etc. we currently have only one exchange box. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.. Btw we have a 50mbit mpls connection between sites.. ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
