Re: How effective is Doubletake or similar HA software with SBS?
- From: "SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:39:06 +1000
Unfortunately, though I appreciate the gist of Dave's comment I have to
point out.
When thinking of running SBS in a virtual environment one of the key factors
I consider is DR. Rather than a second 2k? server and third party software I
would suggest telling all users 'The SBS is not available from 03:00 to
04:00 local time.' At this time SBS (running in the VM) would be shut down
and a full 'offline' copy of the VM made.
If I was to consider two servers I'd probably look to cluster type
solutions. Cluster the virtualisation host machines and run SBS in the
clustered virtual space.
"daveberm" <david.bermingham@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1156648688.441206.278960@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Frank,
The idea is to have SBS running as a virtual machine on either MS
Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMWARE Server, bot of which are free and
described below...
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/software/default.mspx
http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
Both of these products run inside of Windows 2003 R2. You can then run
many "virtual machines" inside of this one physical machine. In this
case, I am proposing just running one virtual machine, your SBS
machine.
Your virtual machine consist of a configuration file and one or more
virtual hard drives, which appear as normal files to the host operating
system. Using SteelEye Data Replication, you can then replicate these
files in real time to another host Windows 2003 R2 server. In the
event of a disaster, you could then simply restart the virtual machine
on your standby server which can be located on the same LAN or in your
DR site on the other side of a WAN.
The catch here is that there is a performance penalty for running your
SBS as a VM. How much of a penalty depends on the configuation of your
server and the user demand on that server. I have many customers who
use VM's and are quite happy with the performance and flexibility in
regards to provisioning, backups and replication. In the end, you will
have to determine if the benefits of running SBS in a virtual
environment out weigh the performance hit you may receive.
The other downside to this solution is the costs. One of the benefits
of SBS is the price point. To implement this DR solution, you will
need to purchase SBS, plus two copies of Windows Server 2003 R2 and
SteelEye Data Replication. You are probably looking at another 5-6k is
software cost, which may make this solution unattractive to the person
running SBS.
With all that said, I can't imagine a better way for providing a DR
plan for my SBS to provide the highest Recovery Point Objective and
Recovery Time Objective.
If you are interested in talking to me directly, request information
from http://www.steeleye.com/forms/contact_us/presalessupport.html and
be sure to ask to talk to me about replicating virtual machines.
David A. Bermingham, MCSE, MCSA:Messaging
Senior Systems Engineer
www.steeleye.com
Frank wrote:
Dave, this is also of interest to my company.
Could you elaborate?
I'm not quite sure how VM fits into the equation.
Go slow and use small words. )
Thanks,
Frank
daveberm wrote:
The problem is that you can have additional DC's in a SBS environment,
but you can only have one SBS in that environment! DoubleTake will
work to replicate data, but only one of the boxes can be running SBS.
If you want a true replica of your SBS, you should look into installing
SBS in a virtual environment (either VMWARE Server or MS Virtual Server
2005 R2) and replicate the entire virtual machine. This gets around
the issue of only having one SBS because in fact you will only ever
have one SBS running at a time.
As far as licensing, you will need to check with MS, but I am guessing
you will only need one licence for SBS and 2 copies of Windows 2003 R2,
which allows you to run Virtual Server 2005 for free.
The big question is how much bandwidth does your ADSL support vs. the
rate of change on your virtual hard disk. Steeleye Data Replication
has a competitive solution to DoubleTake and we are optimized to work
in this environment.
I would be glad to discuss this with you further if you need additional
information.
Sincerely,
David A. Bermingham, MCSE, MCSA:Messaging
Senior Systems Engineer
www.steeleye.com
Kevin Weilbacher [SBS-MVP] wrote:
According to this post from Susan Bradley's blog from 2 years ago
quoting
Nick Whittome, Double Take does work with SBS:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2004/08/09/11532.aspx
--
Kevin Weilbacher [SBS-MVP]
"The days pass by so quickly now, the nights are seldom long"
"Tom Cutting" <TomCutting@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:D06CEE89-9D82-43AE-AE9F-08116426DB65@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Having recently suffered the horror of losing our SBS to mainboard
failure
(power cut and spike that passed straight through the UPS...) I've
been
instructed by my boss to look into HA systems.
Server is only 2 years old, and fortunately I was able to borrow an
identical box to transfer the drive array, but we were still
without
access
to our data and mailboxes for 24 hours. Replacement parts are now
on
order,
but without the spare box we would have been without it for weeks.
Ideally what we would like to do is mirror all the changed data
between a
new server as the main box and the current repaired box in a remote
location
via ADSL. The thought then would be in the event of losing the
first box
we
could collect the reserve and be up and running in about an hour.
Firstly would this be allowed under the SBS licensing, as one box
is
effectively a cold reserve mirror, and perhaps more importantly
would it
work?
As always, TIA.
Tom.
.
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