Question about exchange design

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Douglas - 14 Jun 2005 15:29 GMT

Our company is a small business with 90 PCs and five servers. We used to
run on MS SBS 2003 and did the transition pack to get past the 75PC limit.
We have the following servers in our office computer room.

SERVER1 was the SBS box. It currently serves as the file server and runs
Exchange 2003 Standard edition. We are around 13GB on our Exchange store.
SERVER2 is our application server.
SERVER3 is a Terminal Server
SERVER4 is a Terminal Server

We have opened a branch office in CA that currently is connected to our main
office in Houston through a Point-Point T1. We have a mix of 15 PCs and 10
thin clients in that office along with a server, SERVER5, that is setup as a
DC.

We are exploring the right steps to take in enhancing and upgrading our
messaging system. We are looking at the following idea and I was hoping
someone could let me know if it can be done.

Now that we have remote users outside the office that need connectivity, we
need to be able to keep functioning in the event of a power failure or
building disaster. We have decided to lease a cabinet at a local
datacenter. The cabinet comes with 10Mbps of bandwidth. I am going to
create a site-site VPN between the cabinet and our Houston office. I am
going to use Replication Exec from Veritas to replicate critical data real
time between the Houston office and a file server I will house in the
datacenter. I would also like to place an Exchange Enterprise box in the
datacenter and migrate the users off of SERVER1 and onto the new Exchange
box. I will change the MX record and have mail point to the server in the
datacenter, that much I understand.

Would it make sense to have an exchange server in Houston as well as one in
the DataCenter? Our users are getting irritated by the size limits of the
Exchange store in Houston, so we need to deploy something quickly.

Any advise is so greatly appreciated, you have no idea!

-Douglas

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ScottM - 15 Jun 2005 22:56 GMT

Douglas:

It sounds like the company is trying to get a business continuance plan
going, and you're halfway there. Where will people sit if there is a
disaster? Where is the DC that will need to run the Exchange box in the
event that the building is destroyed?

If the main worry is power outages, then a robust UPS solution would take
care of it, and you could still keep your Exchange server locally.

One thing you could do is keep your Exchange box locally, and back it up to
the off site location regularly, either with a third party solution or via
the Shadow copy service.

If you do decide to move your Exchange box to your offsite location, then it
really doesn't make sense to keep one locally as well.

-Just my 2 cents.

ScottM

> Our company is a small business with 90 PCs and five servers. We used to
> run on MS SBS 2003 and did the transition pack to get past the 75PC limit.
[quoted text clipped - 34 lines]
>
> -Douglas

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Douglas McIver - 15 Jun 2005 23:12 GMT

Thanks for the reply Scott.

The company is opening another office in the Houston area later this year.
My thought is that we will setup a VPN between that location and the
datacenter. We will then use that site in the event of a disaster.

Would it make sense then to put a DC and an Exchange box in the datacenter
network?

Thanks!
-Douglas

> Douglas:
>
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>>
>> -Douglas

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ScottM - 15 Jun 2005 23:31 GMT

Douglas:

Yes, it would make sense to do that. I guess my only problem would be that
if there is a problem, you'd need to travel to the offsite location. I would
also make sure that the local DC is a Global catalog. It might also be wise
to move some of the FSMO roles to the offsite DC as well.

ScottM

> Thanks for the reply Scott.
>
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> >>
> >> -Douglas

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