Re: Fault Tolerence on SBS2003 Prem.

From: Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP] (jeff_at_cfisolutions.com)
Date: 05/19/04 

Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 19:05:04 -0500

You may want to look over these two older posts:

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=eTRmP6frBHA.2088%40tkmsftngp03&output=gplain

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=edEM3sjhAHA.1728%40tkmsftngp02&output=gplain

Admittedly, there's some overlap in logic and text from what I did the other
day, but there's some exploration of the idea that adding more servers
doesn't improve uptime or cost management. Some of the concepts a dated in
NT domain discussion, but the logic follows pretty well.

"Jeff L" <newsgroupsremoveandunderscore_jeff@availabletech.net> wrote in
message news:OYNpEITPEHA.540@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> 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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