Disaster Recovery - Plan for backing up an exchange server

[irishsoldier1]

Hey people

My workplace wants us to come up with a DRP for our exchange server. Im looking for opinions and suggestions. The easiest to most complex methods and the cost associated with them. If anyone can help that would be great.

 

[JaseVaughn]

Well first off if you could tell me alittle bit about your current Exchange setup "ex Number of Exchange Servers, What they are doing, What version of Exchange are you running? All that good stuff." With that in hand we can come up with a DR plan. It all depends on how much you want to spend and the level of protection you get with that associated cost.

 

[irishsoldier1]

One server running 2003. It is our primary outlook server. We are willing to haggle with protection level, as we are looking for a cost effective solution. We are trying to keep our numbers below or at $15k.

 

[bilbus]

Do you want high availability or a recovery server?

If you just want a recovery server buy a second server, install exchange.

Want a HA cluster? buy 2 servers, DAS, server 2003 ENT. Use the current server as a recovery server if the san crashes.

You can do a cluster with
You can do 2x servers like Dell 2950's
a small Direct Attach Storage like a MD3000
2x exchange enterprise
2x server 2003 enterprise


If you migrate to exchange 2007 you can do continuious replication to another server
Second server with software would be around 5k
You could do a cluster for around 15-20k
Enterprise server / exchange server is required for clustering

 

[root]

it really depends on what sort of protection you are looking for.

obviously a second site where everything is backed up looks to be ideal, continuously replicating data.

other than that you can use backup tool like netbackup/backupexec/arcserve which all have exchange message/brick level backups to backup mailboxes in case of disaster.

As said above what are you looking for in your DR?

is it uninterrupted service?
quick rebuilds?
no loss of messages?

how bigger disasters are you planning for? server death or site obliteration?