LOL!  I remember the early days of DLT when Digital called it a TK-50, the
exact same cartridge.  It held 50MB, which was enough when we had Micro
PDP-11/73s with 60MB disks.  The "hook" that pulled the tape out of the
cartridge was prone to failure in the early days; DEC wanted us send the
drive in for service at a cost of something like $1,100.  Our comm tech
found that they sold a package of those hooks for a few bucks, so they
repaired them themselves.  We used to also keep a supply of loop repair
stickers on hand because the tapes were subject to a similar failure, just
in case we needed a broken tape for a recovery.  DLT has come a long way
since then.

Ed Crowley MCSE+Internet MVP
Freelance E-Mail Philosopher
Protecting the world from PSTs and Bricked Backups!T

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dean
Cunningham
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 12:25 PM
To: Exchange Discussions
Subject: RE: DR Plan

Story: Sod's Law

Event: in 24/7 shop, Tech restoring from monthly DLT tape and tape breaks in
drive Step 1: remove tape and exctract tape header from tape drive Step 2:
insert last months DLT tape Step 3: second tape is chewed up by tape drive
Step 4: get digital to replace tape drive Step 5: put third and final tape
into new tape drive Step 6: final tape is chewed up by new tape drive Step
7: Cry! 

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Etts,
Russell
Sent: Friday, 21 January 2005 6:55 a.m.
To: Exchange Discussions
Subject: RE: DR Plan

Wow

The only time I had this happen to me.... I lost a drive and replaced it.
As the array was rebuilding, someone kicked the plugs out of the server.  I
booted it back up and lost the stripe set.  I had to restore 200 gig worth
of data (thank goodness it wasn't Exchange).  Moral of the story - don't let
dingbats in your server room - no matter what the boss says......

Thanks

Russ 

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew
Joyce
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 10:38 PM
To: Exchange Discussions
Subject: DR Plan

Hi,

Firstly, could someone direct me to the archive of this list please, I know
the subject of DR is a recurrent one.

Last week was truly awful for me; we lost email for a week, something I
would never have thought would happen.

Basically a drive failed and corrupted a RAID5 volume; I had heard of it
happening, but never experienced it before.
It's very hard to explain to bosses that we have RAID to provide resilience,
but sometimes it doesn't work.

It took a long time to declare the volume dead (waiting for new drives,
waiting for engineers).
Building the new server was problematic, restore system state just didn't
work.
It had been the only DC on site which complicated things.
Restoring the stores was also not smooth and took along time, then the
stores would not mount and all that took ages.
After logging a call with Microsoft, who insisted I do everything I had
already did again and told me 'that should have worked'.  (ring them at
0800, they will call back in 4 hours, ring them at 2000, they have gone
home)
Our upstream mail handler had their servers looping our incoming mail and
causing it to bounce with 'too many hops'.
When our server came back up the mail which was being store by other
upstream handlers, rushed in and went nowhere.

/me shudders

Anyway, we're back now, and I want to write the mother of all DR plans while
the incident is fresh.
Essentially there was far too much learning going on, and not enough
knowing.
The awful truth is we had planned to start DR testing this month.

I'm sitting here reading articles and making note about how our system is
setup, I just don't know what should be included.

Can anyone give me some pointers ?
Are there any template I can use to create useful documents.

Our setup now is a single Exchange 2003 Enterprise server, 2 sites, 2 DCs (1
on each site) The server now has two mirrored RAID arrays, logs and system
on one and stores on the other.
I backup the Stores+flush on Monday and the logs the rest of the week.

So if this server goes 'pop' is my procedure something like :

don't have contact details only in outlook know where software and licenses
are know where ssl certs are make sure isps are holding mail and for how
long organise suitable hardware setup arrays reset computer account install
os same name, different IP (to stop mail coming in) join domain install
exchange /disasterrecovery restore stores and logs connect account to
mailboxes check internal mail install av and as reset ip check mail flow
make backup

Clearly this need fleshing out, but is is essentially correct ?
I know things go wrong and being able to cope with those moments is what is
going to make a DR plan better, but is this the basic best case scenario ?

Is it worth perhaps having a linux box (debian) as a smarthost (configured
not to deliver by default) to catch incoming mail while issues are resolved
?

what's the score with changing the IP address to control mail flow is this
sane ?

We have about 140 mailboxes, which may not seem like many but everyone is
important.

I consider myself lucky, our staff were all very patient, tolerant and
surprisingly understanding, I've been in IT for 16 years, and to lose
incoming mail the way we did, utterly mortifies me.

Thanks

Matt Joyce
Children's Cancer Institute Australia
http://www.ccia.org.au


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  • RE: DR Plan Ed Crowley [MVP]

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