Chapter 13. Exchange Disaster Recovery
| IN THIS CHAPTER
There are no prizes for realizing that email has become ubiquitous. Email addresses can be found on everything from candy wrappers to billboards. Not only is email replacing the Fax machine, but its attachments are replacing mailed and couriered documents from orders and contracts to graphics and multimedia. Email is also replacing telephone communications in areas such as inquiries, complaints, and help desk. It is no surprise then that Microsoft Exchange is part of the base platform of Small Business Server. Exchange provides huge benefits in terms of collaborative communication between staff, customers, and suppliers, locally via the network and remotely via the Internet, Outlook Web Access, and Outlook over HTTP. There is also huge growth in Mail-enabled mobile devices such as Smartphones and PDAs directly synced to Microsoft Exchange. One missed order or complaint can be disastrous for a small or medium-sized business. The messaging system is therefore both time sensitive and business critical. All systems fail, and there is always a risk that at sometime Microsoft Exchange will be unable to service email. However, this need not be a showstopper. Both the Microsoft Exchange and the SBS developer teams have provided many enhancements in SBS 2003 and in Exchange Server 2003 to minimize the downtime and its impact on the business's users, suppliers, and customers. With a full SBS wizard-generated backup, the server, users, mailboxes, and data can all be brought back online quickly. Using Microsoft Exchange Server's Deleted Mail and Deleted Mailbox retention, users and administrators can recover items within minutes. Should the Exchange database be infected, corrupted, or lost for any reason, a database can be brought back online to continue servicing mail while still running user mailboxes restored via the Recovery Storage Group. These features dramatically increase uptime while simultaneously reducing recovery time. Still, this does not cure all ills, and, depending on the nature, severity, and criticality of the disaster and the urgency of reconnection, you may need to call on a number of techniques and tools to recover mailbox and/or other data such as public folders. Bear in mind that Murphy's Law holds true. If it can happen, it will happen; it's just a question of when. Provided that you are prepared, when disaster strikes, it need not be the total disaster it first appears to be, so plan, implement, and practiceabove all, practice. Keep in mind that a backup is only as good as the last time you actually restored it. This chapter discusses Microsoft Exchange databases, the types of disasters that can occur, the tools used for backup and recovery, and how and when to use them. It can't be emphasized strongly enough that you should not just read and follow these steps and methods after disaster has struck but use them to plan, implement, and practice. |
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 253