Tips for disaster recovery readiness

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Virtually Yours — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 23:35:20 GMT

Unless an organization is made of money, the practice requirements (a beefy workstation, sizable disk, a domain controller, network infrastructure--and presumably licences for Win 2003 Server (x2) and Exchange(...right?...)) are not small.

One way of mitigating this may be to use server virtualization software like VMware or your very own Virtual Server 2005. Could we have your thoughts on this.

Also this is a perfect segway into another more serious issue/question (for me anyways and I've been searching high and low for an official answer):

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=897614

Quote: "Microsoft Exchange Server. Exchange is currently not supported running within Microsoft Virtual Server. Exchange will be supported within Virtual Server starting with Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 and subsequent releases."

Other than one line above saying that Exchange 2003 SP2 will be supported as a VM in Virtual Server 2005, I have seen no reference anywhere else talking about this issue, certainly not on any Exchange-related page.

While I understand this blog may not be official, I'm looking for any quasi-official guidance on using Exchange 2003 SP2 on Virtual Server 2005. Certainly the right technical people are here on this blog. Some of us need to run Exchange 2003 on virtual hardware to consolidate servers. Thanks.

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Tim Jordan — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:21:40 GMT

I just received some trial software on DVD including Exchange 2003. The package says its based on Virtual Machine 2005. I can test it and get back to you.

Tim

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Rob Campbell — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:43:11 GMT

Can an E2K3 Bridgehead (no mailboxes, but multiple virtual servers and connectors) be restored from just the AD information and a backup of the IIS Metabase (given that all the Windows server configuration settings match)?

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Adam Gates — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:43:28 GMT

First steps for any "cheat sheet"

1. Check you Application and System logs for anything that stands out. Most Exchange disaters dont just happen you can get a serious head start by doing this. If it is RED find out why and FIX it before it brings the server down.
2. Check that your backups are running, successful, and available. If not FIX IT.
3. Verify the hardware agreements and contact the vendor to upgrade to a faster response time if you need it. 24-72 hours is a LONG time to run on a degraded RAID 5 array better get that to at least 4 hours.
Do steps 1 and 2 daily. Do step 3 ever 6 months.

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Vitrually Yours — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 02:53:00 GMT

FYI,

The first 2 of your three links point to your blog site instead of the address on show on the page... kinda like links in one of those fake Ebay Phish emails... ;-)

You may want to correct this.

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:21:50 GMT

Please bear in mind that the 'Exchange guy' can also be female.

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Matthew Byrd — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:00:40 GMT

Hi Virtually Yours,

Remember that we are not trying to run the server we are just trying to simulate that the server has failed. A simple high end user machine with some added hard drives will do from a hardware standpoint. For the licenses; that I would not worry about as the server is never going to have any users connect to it. It will just be used in test to verify your backup and restore process. Also you can make it an all in one box DC/GC/E2k3 server ... this does have some limitations but saves you having to have another piece of hardware to do the test.

You can use virtualization in order to do this test. Virtual Server or PC would work fine along with any of the other virtualization software that is out there. What is comes down to from a Microsoft stand point is that we have not tested Exchange running in virtualization so we will not support it in production. We will do everything we can to help you get it working but if we believe for any reason that your issues is being caused by it running in a virtual server we will require you to install in on stand alone hardware in order to precede.

Hopefully this has addressed your questions.

-Matthew Byrd

re: Tips for disaster recovery readiness

Matthew Byrd — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:37:10 GMT

Hi Rob Campbell,

For the recovery of the BH server that contains no mailboxes you only need to run setup /disasterrecovery for the Install and the Service Pack then start the server up with blank databases. No other steps are needed. All information about connectors in E2k3 are stored in AD. They will replicate down to the Metabase using DS2MB.

-Matt