Re: Moving to a HA config ?

What's their budget and do they really need a high availability?

If they are SBS then they can't do this.

I've been running a single DC SBS box in various formats [4.0 to 4.5 to 2000 to 2003 and can count on one hand the times we've been down. And it's typically been a nic, a switch or it dropped a harddrive and we weren't down for long.

If they have 8 Pcs and if all of them are not XP sp2... do that first.

Hardware failure risk? Get redundant parts.
OS failure? From what? We screw up the OS around here...not the OS fails.
Malicious attack? From where? Inside? Outside? A properly configured SBS box has more risks from the inside stupid users than anything else.

Spend your time/money on getting them off local admin rights and onto user mode.

The entire universe has no redundancy.
The earth has no redundancy.
You have no redundancy.

If it takes you days to recover from something.. you aren't doing your job to have parts and alternatives.

If you want HA... kiss SBS goodbye and we'll see you in the big server clustering newsgroups.

adl wrote:
I'm helping a small business which runs SBS 2003 (primarily for Exchange Server and shared folders). They have about 8 client PCs connected to this server. However, this server is the "heart" of their business. If it ever fails, they're down for however long it takes to get back on line. We have RAID-1 hard drives, create nightly backups, run all kinds of security software, etc., but there's always the potential for a serious hardware or OS failure or a malicious attack, which might take days to recover from.

So, I'd like them to add a second server and create a high-availability environment in which they could continue to access all of their files and Exchange if the main server is down. The only technology I'm really aware of for this is MSCS, but I don't know if that's the only (or "best") solution for this type of environment.

I guess I'm looking for some recommendations, and perhaps a white paper to understand the potential solutions and what it would take to get them migrated to a HA configuration. How much work is it, what are the costs, potential risks, etc.? 
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: SBS2003 redundancy
    ... No you can't get away from that single point of failure. ... Redundancy has many forms which can put your mind at greater ease. ... more than cover the cost of a second redundant server available in case ... >> within the SBS domain up to the 75 connection license limit, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: how to keep SBS server from auto-locking
    ... I agree that small businesses are more cost-conscious than ... whether to take those risks. ... SBS is an example: for best possible security, all server ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Two SBS 2003 Servers in Single Domain
    ... A better way put it is that you can't *run* SBS where another server ... How to install Small Business Server 2003 in an existing Active Directory ... configured) allows you to maintain some redundancy. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • SBS2003 or 2003 Standard
    ... has about 40 users and is currently runnning 1 SBS ... 2003 server. ... They want to apply some redundancy by adding 3 other servers ... For instance, if exchange was ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.setup)
  • Add a second DC to SBS 2003 domain
    ... We currently have an SBS 2003 Server but we would like more redundancy in ... the SBS 2003 Domain? ... Just wanted to know if it still technically function ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)