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By Mike Daugherty
14 Jun 2004 | SearchExchange.com |
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The following is tip #2 from "12 ways to protect your Exchange 2003 data," excerpted
from Mike Daugherty's new book, Monitoring & Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003,
reprinted with permission of Digital Press, an imprint of Elsevier, copyright 2004. For more
Information, please visit www.elsevier.com. Return to the main page for more tips on this
topic.
Hardware failures, software failures, human error and sometimes even natural disasters can
disrupt your e-mail environment. Disasters happen, and you must be prepared to respond
quickly. By using the following practices, you can reduce the risk and impact of potential
disasters.
- Ensure that circular logging is turned off for all Storage Groups. With circular logging
enabled, transaction logs are overwritten to save disk space. However, overwriting
transaction logs prevents the overwritten logs from being used during recovery operations.
- Perform daily full (normal) backups of the Exchange Information Store.
- Perform periodic full backups of Windows and Exchange configuration data.
- Select server-class hardware for your servers rather than high-end desk
top systems. Redundant power supplies, multiple processors, and hard
ware RAID are worth the extra cost to ensure server availability in the
event of a component failure.
- Install all Exchange servers in a controlled environment consistent with
the manufacturer's recommendations. Protect the servers with Uninter
ruptible Power Supplies. Physically secure the environment that houses
the servers.
- Protect databases using hardware RAID-5 (disk striping plus parity) or
RAID 01 (disk striping and mirroring) technology.
- Keep transaction log files on separate hard drives from the databases.
Protect the log files using RAID-1 (disk mirroring) technology.
- Keep the Windows operating system files on separate hard drives and
protect them using RAID-1 (disk mirroring).
- Ensure that your Exchange servers have adequate disk space, including sufficient space to
support recovery operations.
- Have multiple Windows domain controllers (DCs) for each domain to
provide redundancy in the event of a single failure. Three DCs are recommended. If you only
have two DCs, then you are at risk whenever
you take one DC offline for maintenance. With three DCs, you are still
protected if one of the DCs fails while you have one temporarily offline
for maintenance.
- Maintain up-to-date documentation for your server configurations.
- Have a dedicated recovery server with the same configuration as your
production servers. A dedicated recovery system is one that is only used
when a disaster occurs. The server is not connected to the network.
- Fully document your recovery procedures and regularly practice disaster
recoveries.
By following these practices, you can reduce the risk and impact of disasters, but you
cannot completely avoid disruptions.
Get more "12 ways to protect your Exchange 2003 data," Return to the main
page.
About the author: Mike Daugherty is Manager of the Microsoft Consulting
Resource Unit for the Central Region as well as a Senior Solution Architect and Program
Manager with HP Consulting and Integration Services. He travels widely, working with
large Exchange installations and helping clients manage their systems. He is
based in Texas.
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