Microsoft Clustering on Exchange 2003

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We have been running two MS Clusters on Exchange 2003 for about a year
now and we have never benefited from the redundancy. To the contrary we
have actually had a significant amount of down time due to the cluster
failing over when it shouldn't or becoming unstable. (The configuration
is one active node and one standby server in the cluster.) The real
kicker here is the convergence time. I was familiar with Linux clusters
that take a few seconds to fail over, so you can imagine my surprise
when the Exchange cluster can take up to 10 minutes to fail over! The
MS consultant who was helping configure this cluster told us that it
may take up to 15 minutes. In my mind this isn't high availability, it
is rapid recovery.

At this point we are looking for alternatives to the MS clustering. Has
anyone had experience with other clustering or high availability
solutions for Exchange 2003 that have work better then this?
Specifically has anyone used Marathon clustering or Polyserve?

The best insights come from co-engineers who actually have experience
working with these systems and I would very much appreciate your
insights from any experiences you have had with this.

Thanks!

Mike

.

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