Johann's Unified Communications : ha

OCS R2 Site Resiliency

jkruse — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:55:00 GMT

Using backup and restoration procedures for site disaster recovery as described in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 documentation library topic Backup and Restoration, can entail some downtime for users.

This white paper describes a site resiliency solution for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The solution includes an Enterprise pool that spans two geographically separate sites. The solution provides a failover mechanism between the two sites to ensure that Office Communications Server functionality such as instant messaging, presence, and conferencing remains available even if one of the sites becomes unavailable.

This white paper is divided into three main sections:

The Solution section provides an overview of the tested and supported site resiliency solution described in this paper.
The Test Methodology section describes the testing topology, expected behavior, and test results.
The Findings and Recommendations section provides practical guidance for deploying your own failover solution.

To successfully follow this paper, you should have a thorough understanding of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering.

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c930febb-3a44-4bf3-969d-1c52675a7063

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) in Exchange 2007 SP1

jkruse — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:50:36 GMT

One of the best, and most talked about, capabilities coming in Exchange 2007 SP1 is Standby Continuous Replication or SCR.

This features allows you to have a standby Exchange server for DR/BCP purposes, in addition to your CCR cluster for HA - in different datacentres of course :)

So by having three servers - with no specialised/expensive replication or storage requirements - you can now have a full high-availability (CCR) and disaster recovery (SCR) plan for your Exchange messaging and voicemail platform.

A great post on SCR has just been published at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/06/28/445538.aspx

Technorati Tags: exchange 2007, sp1, ha, dr, bcp, scr, ccr

CCR Transport Dumpster

jkruse — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:05:44 GMT

CCR in Exchange 2007 uses asynchronous database replication. You would think that in the event of failure on the Active node that there would be data loss on the Passive node if the logs hadn't finished replicating, right? Well, think again ...