If they aren't already doing so, keeping the backup tapes offsite (the
president takes them home or something) can be an incredible lifesaver.
We saved a company from complete shutdown because we had an offsite
backup. The place burned down, my then-boss ran to Costco, grabbed a
higher-end workstation-class machine and did the restore. They didn't
have their printers or workstations, but they did have their data and
their email.
Oh, the trunk of the president's car doesn't count as off-site. Another
client tried to restore from tapes stored in a trunk in the middle of
winter. It wasn't pretty.
John Ryan
dhs&associatesinc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 12:24 PM
To: Exchange Discussions
Subject: Very small servers (was: A good space for the Exchange ...)
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Daniel Chenault wrote:
>> I thought that if you lost the logs, there was a procedure to at
>> least restore the data in the Stores? Yeah, you lose anything that
>> wasn't committed, of course, but can't you recover something?
>
> Yes, there is. In my world of support, though, lost data ==
> unacceptable.
Everything is relative. The company I work for supports very small
businesses (no more than 50 people, usually less than 20) and SOHO
enviornments. One of our most common "new customer" scenarios is when
the office has finally grown to the point where they need to buy their
first dedicated network server.
In that sort of situation, you cannot justify stand-by servers for
restores and recovery. Hell, we usually have to argue just to get them
to buy a tape drive.
Now, consider this configuration: NT 4.0, Exchange 5.5, with patches
kept current. Single server for everything -- file, print, mail,
backups, etc. Either a single non-redundent disk, or two disks as a
single mirrored volume. All files, databases, database logs, etc., on
the same disk. Circular logging turned on. It gets backed up every
night to tape -- often a full backup every night. Multiple tapes are
used in rotation (father/son, etc.).
The customer is fully aware that hardware failure will likely result
in permenently losing the changes made since last night's backup. It is
considered an acceptable risk.
My belief has been that this scenario should work. While performance
is far from the theoretial ideal, there is nothing that would cause data
corruption or system failure. If a catestrophic failure occurs (e.g.,
dead disk), once the failure is corrected, we should be able to recover
to the point of the previous night's backup.
Is my belief correct, or are there additional factors that I am not
aware of?
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do
| not | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person,
| entity or | organization. All information is provided without
| warranty of any kind. |
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