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High availability for Microsoft Exchange with VMware ESX Server and SteelEye LifeKeeper
Popular Linux-based virtualization and failover technologies help put together a robust high availability and disaster-recovery solution for Microsoft Exchange -- without upgrading the Exchange software itself.
One government agency recently embarked on a mission to provide both high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) for their Microsoft Exchange 2003 server. Their DR plan required a recovery-time objective (RTO) of <15 minutes, and their recovery point objective (RPO) required minimal to no data loss. The general availability of their Exchange server needed to be in the 99.99% range. In addition, physical space and budget for the DR site was constrained. These requirements eliminated any solution offered natively by Microsoft as well as any storage-based replication solutions.
After reviewing the available options, the agency selected SteelEye’s LifeKeeper Protection Suite for Exchange to provide real-time data protection and application monitoring and recovery of Exchange, and VMware ESX Server 2.5 to host all servers in the DR site to help reduce the cost of building and managing the DR infrastructure.
Three main factors led to the choice of the two products..
• Minimal downtime required during installation
• Support of physical-to-virtual clustering
• Support of protecting their existing Exchange Server
With the choices made, implementation was next on the agenda. First, the infrastructure was established. A point-to-point 45Mbps WAN connection was established between the primary data center and the DR site. The DR site also had a direct connection to the Internet via a T1 line, which served as the gateway to send and receive SMTP e-mail in the event of a disaster as well as provide a means for remote access to Outlook Web Access in the event of a disaster.
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