Re: Fault Tolerence on SBS2003 Prem.

From: Jeff L (newsgroupsremoveandunderscore_jeff_at_availabletech.net)
Date: 05/18/04 

Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 19:44:00 -0400

Dude (aka. Jeff Middleton) wrote a book. Very informative.

Anyonyone ever tried using Application Center 2000 to cluster. I understand
the SBS2003 cannot be clustered on its own and that you cannot run two SBS
servers on the same network but this is a cloning situation and I wouldn't
rule it out until I had tried it or some one knew it wouldn't for sure..

I know it is just two expensive but I would still like to know if it would
work. Perhaps we could convice Microsoft to bring the cost down a little.

Regards,
Jeff Loucks
       Available Technology ®
            Solutions For Professionals ®
                  www.availabletechnology.com

"Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP]" <jeff@cfisolutions.com> wrote in message
news:elfzLmBPEHA.2960@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Too often this topic is approached without defining any scale or costs. It
> leads to some interesting debate, but not nearly as much useful strategic
> information for a practical decision. Fault Tolerance and Disaster
Recovery
> are important topics, no doubt, but they are topics that need to be mapped
> on a scale of cost management, business priorities, and technical resource
> realities.
>
> The thing I noticed in your post, Chris, before I started, you are an MS
> partner, therefore you are not likely asking this question for your own
> consumption, rather for a strategic policy or plan for your own customers,
> right?
>
> There are no absolute answers when it comes to spending other people's
> money, or managing other people's risks if you don't bother to find out
what
> THEY think about it. Therefore, I would recommend a really practical set
of
> questions you should ask your customers in order for you to design an FT
and
> DR plan that suits their needs. The key point that is so often missed is
> that most really small businesses are not actually going to prefer to pay
a
> contractor $12000 a year to avoid 1 lost day of work for the business. I'm
> not saying that it's never going to be the case, I'm offering that for
most
> small businesses, spending money on low probability risk protections isn't
> necessarily better than accepting the possibility of an unforeseen "snow
> day" in which the network is down due to a failure.
>
> Of course, prevent any preventable condition that is easily cost
justified,
> but going to the extremes of labor intensive preventative steps isn't the
> best answer. There is always a compromise involved in any business
> decisision, and it's the IT consultants job to include the owner of the
> business in arriving at a suitable answer.
>
> So, let's take a look a list of questions you could ask the customer:
>
> 1. Hypothetically, if a technical failure were likely to occur once in
each
> year that caused the total loss of function for your business for a period
> of 4 hrs, how much would you be willing to spend in costs paid out monthly
> to make that time be reduced to 1 hr?
> $200/mo?
> $500/mo?
> $1000/mo?
> 2. Same question, but what if the cost were a one-time expense when you
> bought your new server, essentially something that you could spend on the
> server equipment that improved the recovery time from an annual event from
> 4hrs to 1hr?
> $200/mo?
> $500/mo?
> $1000/mo?
> 3. Same question as the first one, but this time, what if the risk was a
> failure that would cause you to lose an entire day of work, and the
> improvement was only reducing the downtime from the full day to a 4hr
> downtime?
> $200/mo?
> $500/mo?
> $1000/mo?
>
> Next set of questions, this time on data loss and loss of operations:
>
> 1. If your company suffered an unpreventable incident that cause your
server
> to crash at some point during the day, and a recovery of the system
required
> a choice between longer downtime to recover data changes that day, how
would
> you prioritize the following:
>
> 4 hrs into the day's work, the crash occurs and in order to recover the
> first 4hrs of data changes, you must keep the server down for 4 hrs., or
> forfeit that technical data recovery process by returning to the start of
> day condition within an hour and having your staff reconstruct the data by
> re-entry? Would you prefer to miss the rest of the day's work, or give up
> the data changes recovery?
>
> Same scenario, but what if the crash implied loss of 1 week of data, but
> required 1 day of technical work?
>
> What is the maximum number of hours or days of work you would feel
> comfortable in your company's ability for reconstructing if a technical
> recovery was cost prohibitive or simply unavailable?
>
> 2. List the types of information that you business maintains as data you
> expect to keep stored on your server, and assign a value on a scale of 1 -
5
> (5 is critical) what your priority would be in recovering information if
the
> cost was excessively high, but unavoidable:
>
> Email
> Electronic Faxes
> Word, Excel, Powerpoint files
> Accounting/Line of business application based data
> Technical or creative business records (Autocad files, scanned documents,
> graphic design)
> Contact lists, electronic calendar schedules
> Legal documents
> Records with Federal/State/Local requirements to maintain
> Files and Data you possess which represent your own customer's
> investment/expense to create
> Photographs, Digital Video
>
> 3. If it were possible to keep your business operating in some partial
sense
> for a day, 2 days, 3 days or a week, identify from the list you created
just
> above, how long your business could operate without the ability to update
or
> use each of those items, but assuming that you would regain use without
loss
> of the historical information, just the time delay?
>
>
> From these questions, and others like them, you should be able to develop
a
> profile of the customer's needs that helps you to understand what costs
and
> tradeoffs for downtime they are willing to choose....if they have the
option
> to make the choice.
>
> Many small businesses will prefer to take a chance on missing a day of
work
> if it saves them $5000 per year simply because many small businesses
operate
> on a basis where a delay of a day in work isn't that expensive to them.
Not
> many businesses would prefer to miss a day or a week of work, but that's
not
> the question here. The question for the owner is if you must pay in
> advance...forever losing that money invested for a risk with only a low
> probability of impact...would you simply pay or would you take your
chances?
>
> At some point, this translates back to risk aversion and return on
> investment information that helps decide the budgets and expectations this
> owner has.
>
> The IT consultant's job is to then translate the options back to available
> technology and strategic planning initiatives.
>
> Clearly, most IT consultants should make some basic decisions going in
that
> are just part of a baseline assumption if at all possible:
> - a UPS on the server
> - a regular system and data backup
> - hardware that can be maintained by a vendor who will be around in a year
> or more
> - a reasonably standard installation that can be recreated and repaired
>
> But when it comes to the FT and DR issues, most of the issues are going to
> be measured as
> - downtime for maintenance
> - invested cost of equipment which provides no added value, only FT/DR
> functionality
> - routine fee costs of preventative maintenance
>
> ...that vs.
> - cost of critical response
> - response time for a loss of operations event
> - downtime for recovery
> - data loss tradeoffs for technical recovery
> - unavoidable data loss due to a "window of time" during which there is no
> data protection in-place
> - emergency expedite cost for equipment replacement vs. stocking spare
> parts.
> - unforeseen downtime that an FT/DR plan doesn't address
>
> When you present all this information, if the FT/DR plan calls for taking
a
> customer from a $3000 server up to needing another $3000 server, plus
> another $3000 worth of other hardware and software, plus $12,000/yr in
> preventative labor....you might find the owner just doesn't see this as a
> great idea to invest in so that you have a "nothing can go wrong plan"
which
> in fact, isn't really a fact anyway. You know, if the power goes off, even
> if you have that backup generator in the yard to run the server, if you
> can't run the workstations, telephones and air
conditioning/heat....chances
> are the owner is sending the staff home anyway.
>
> If the DR plan calls for rebuilding a server in 1hr by spending $15000/yr
in
> prep work for that event, could just be the owner would rather take a day
to
> go golfing and let the staff go home while you do a $2000 repair day on
the
> server. The owner might even forfeit the previous day's work rather than
> paying $3000 for more stuff or services. You don't know if you don't ask.
>
> And in the final level of details, the ones that other's posted thoughts
on
> this thread with, there are very many good practical steps you can take to
> improve FT/DR that include better hardware to begin with, reliable backup
> operations, and strategic DR snapshots with drive images.
>
> As a rule of thumb, sort of arbitrary, but I start with getting a
validation
> from the owner that most of my customers are able to survive a 4hr
downtime,
> unless they identify why that's not the case in fact. A single server
> environment with a contractor as IT support should generally be able to
> address a four hour recovery in most situations, and the server should be
> designed with that thought in mind. However, if you look at the nightly
> back, you may well realize that if it takes 6 hrs to restore from tape, a
4
> hr recovery may be hard to hit, right?
>
> In this case, having a second server and splitting the roles of the
servers
> is probably the most likely way to cut the risks in half, or at least,
split
> the risk by improving survival of some more critical operations. I rarely
> find that having a duplicate server sitting cold at a customer office is
> more valuable than having that second server operating in a valuable role,
> but that's not an absolute situation. In offices where I have 4 or more
> servers, I usually do have a strategic plan for switching roles of
servers,
> or bringing in a suitable alternate package of hardware as needed.
>
> In the long run, the single most valuable skill an IT person can have in a
> DR role is experience in rebuilding an installation on different hardware,
> and the experience to know how long that will take them given a specific
set
> of tools. Identify what those tools are for your experience and technical
> level, then practice with them. Quote your customer based upon this
> experience and set of tools. For instance, it's my baseline preference to
> have the following available to me at every customer server site:
>
> - FT drives, preferably RAID5 because a drive failure still isn't an
> emergency if there's a hot spare, and a mirror is likely to cause a boot
> failure even if the system/data is still preserved
> - nightly backups to removeable media such as tapes
> - UPS on the server
> - Server is not used as a workstation or by local logons
> - A system partition drive image has been prepared at some point in the
last
> yr., or during the last lift of major Service Pack update level.
> - The server is running AV on the local system
> - The server is running a backup program that provide job by job logging
> history, not just last job
> - I have either at my office or at the customer's location, another
computer
> which is reasonably suitable to load that disk image as needed.
> - I have either at my office or at the customer's location, another drive
> suitable to boot that drive image.
>
> The last two items in the list deserve a little more detail.
>
> Many people do not know or have the technical skill to reliably or
> consistently implement a server recovery on different server hardware, or
> even from a different set of boot drive hardware. For instance, I prepare
> all my servers to boot from a drive image either on the native production
> boot controller (typically a SCSI RAID) or in addition, from the onboard
> EIDE controller. It's pretty simple to make this happen. Once you finish
> installing the server OS, or at any time in the future, if you simply plug
> in an EIDE drive and then perform a complete boot cycle and shutdown, you
> will probably now be able to install a drive image of the RAID as a
restore
> onto EIDE drive in that same computer and boot from the EIDE with not
> additional steps. (This assumes that the SCSI subsystem drives are not
> attached at the time, otherwise you do need to indicate boot preference
for
> one of the two bootable subsystems)
>
> Furthermore, booting a drive image on different server hardware (different
> motherboard) isn't really that complicated either. In fact, I think it's a
> good idea for an IT consultant to be aware of what similar and dissimilar
> server hardware they handle that is compatible to transfer and boot from.
As
> a general rule, if you have the same boot controller (SCSI card or PCI
EIDE
> or SATA card), you probably can boot most any dual processor based
> motherboard with the same Windows install provided the motherboard is
recent
> within the last 4 yrs and therefore ACPI compliant. Similar comment for
> single CPU P4 is going to boot from a Windows Dual CPU install. Note that
if
> the motherboard is dual CPU socket, it's not relevant that you have only a
> single CPU, it's a Dual CPU motherboard.
>
> The point at which you realize that most of the over-zealous FT/DR plans
are
> just overkill is when you see the look on a customer's face when you find
> any means to get them back up and running quickly, using whatever
resources
> you have available.....and they are not paying a fortune for those
> resources. Most customers really don't care if you use a PIII workstation
> running on EIDE as a temporary workaround to having their production Dual

> Xeon server with RAID5 go down by a lightning strike, or burst waterpipe,
or
> fire in the server closet. All that matters is that you can get them back
up
> and running on something.
>
> Building a technical nerve center that involves multiple servers adding to
> the upgrade costs, the maintenance costs, and the purchase costs isn't
> really the right answer for most businesses. The right answer is letting
> them have a way to contribute to determining the costs to run their
> business, to participate in the risk analysis, and to have an IT
contractor
> who is both competent technically, and has a sense of business reality as
> well.
>
>
>
> "Chris White - Stirling" <cw@NOSPAMstirtech.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:da6201c43b76$30e6fa80$a401280a@phx.gbl...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I had my questions sort of answered in my last post a few
> > days ago. Anyway i wondered what is the best advice for
> > fault tolerence on SBS2003 Premium?
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Chris White
> > Stirling Technical Engineering Ltd.
> > Microsoft Partners
> >
> >
>
>

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