mirroring two Windows 2000 Servers

[MetroRider]

Here's the situation i have:

I have a server running Windows 2000 Advanced Server with Exchange 2000 Enterprise. I would like to setup an alternate server at an off-site location for disaster recovery purposes. At this point, I am not sure whether or not to use the clustering service built into Windows, or use DFS/FRS to do the trick, or use a 3rd party program.

I want to do this over the Internet, as i have a 640k/640k WAN link at both locations.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

As always, thanks in advance...

 

[spyordie007]

DFS would only work for file shares.

About the only way you could really accomplish what you've stated would be to image the server with a disk imagine utility (i.e. Ghost) and transfer that image to the remote location.

There are about a million documents on how to backup and recover windows servers; you may want to just start with some of them.

 

[MetroRider]

hi spyordie007,

I was almost hoping not to have to use imaging as a permanent solution for this. At present, I have both Ghost and TrueImage, as well as BackupExec 9.1 running on the server. My main idea for the imaging would be as follows:

Image the server on Saturday night/ Sunday morning using either Ghost/TrueImage. Use BackupExec to create a full backup of the server immediately following the image creation. Have both files on a separate hard-drive and transport it to the remote location. At the remote site, restore the image from Ghost/TrueImage, and have the Backupexec file on hand on a separate drive. Now, throughout the week, create incremental backups for each weekday, and submit those smaller files over the Internet to the remote server.

As is stands, the server right now is nearly 10 GB's. Backupexec gives me a 10GB file for a full backup, and Ghost/Trueimage would be slightly smaller. My biggest concern with this method overall was that some colleagues had suggested sending the whole, full backup to the other computer remotely. However, 10 GB's would take 33 hours to send, which would not be feasible for overnight transfers. I only expect the incrementals to be at most 1-1.5 GB's a night, which would be easily sent within 4-5 hours overnight. That would work out perfectly for me.

 

[spyordie007]

Why do you need to have an identical copy of the server? Why not just regular backups (say on the weekends) and differential backups on the weeknights? That would give you a much smaller filesize. Yes it wouldnt be as easy to restore your backup, but than again offsite backups arent generally used for convinience.

 

[MetroRider]

One other question comes to mind though:

I also setting this secondary remote server up as a secondary MX record for the Exchange email. If for any reason the main server goes down (be it power, internet being down, hardware failure, etc) all emails would continue to be sent to the secondary box. That's no problem and easily configured.

However, say it would be two days before the main computer would be ablel to come back online. What would be the method for sending the emails on the secondary server back to the primary server, and having it sync'd up? I wouldn't want to create 20 PST files of people's emails and re-import them at the main location. Doesn't MS Exchange 2000 have a feature/function for syncing up two servers. I guess clustering wouldn't work here because in essense, both computers are the same (same hostname, DC, GUID's, etc.)

thanks again....

 

[MetroRider]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
Why do you need to have an identical copy of the server? Why not just regular backups (say on the weekends) and differential backups on the weeknights? That would give you a much smaller filesize. Yes it wouldnt be as easy to restore your backup, but than again offsite backups arent generally used for convinience.

The reason I would like to have an identical server would be for disaster recovery purposes. Normally, having off-site backups would be fine, however in this case, I am tasked with having a machine at a remote end ready to go in case something were to happen to the main server. Just trying to see the best means about doing this, as well as most efficient and cost-effective (if you could say such a thing, since putting this setup altogether to begin with definitely wasn't cheap ).

 

[spyordie007]

I guess I just dont understand why you're trying to set it up this way. I think you're just trying to setup high availability and if I were doing that I would have the 2 servers clustered (not mirrored).

What exactly is the purpose of mirroring these machines?

 

[MetroRider]

OK, then maybe what I am trying to do is a cross between a mirror and a cluster :/

My main purpose is wanting to have a secondary server ready to go in case anything happens to the main server. I would assume a cluster is what would be needed to make that work. However, I do like the option of having an exact replica of the server as well. I guess it isn't possible to do both, since a cluster is aware of the nodes in the setup.

 

[spyordie007]

I guess there *might* be a 3rd party app that does this, but I'm not sure. Cant say I've ever seen anyone try and do both at the same time like you are.

 

[gaidin123]

With clustering, the data is still contained on a single array that is shared between the boxes so if you lose the array, both exchange servers would lose all their data. That last time we looked at clustering a SQL2000 box that seemed to be the case. Also the servers would probably be in the same rack so if say a fire or flood took out that area, you'd be done.

Unless having a 100% up to date mirror is critical, I think a combination of disk images and full/incremental backups that get transported offsite due to the slow link would be your best bet.

Gaidin

 

[MetroRider]

Thanks for the input. To make note, I only want the data mirrored during night-time, and I feel that it would hurt the internet pipe too much by trying to send data between the business times of 9-5. Good point in mentioning that if a file is erased at one end, it would be erased at the other end too.