Michael, thanks for the post, however, I thought it best to jump in and add some additional information and hopefully provide value here. 1. You are correct that we are talking about planned vs. unplanned downtime and that the # 1 thing that all Exchange administrators should strive to avoid is UNPLANNED DOWNTIME since it’s so very disruptive and costly to the organization.
2. While GOexchange certainly leverages ESEutil, ISinteg and other MS API’s it provides much more than a GUI to the MS utilities. Additionally GOexchange provides pre and post maintenance backup integration, notification etc to provide a set-it-and-forget-it maintenance solution. 3. BTW, Just to be clear we don’t recommend maintenance take place once a week (EverySunday), more like once every 6-8 weeks. Thanks DC GOexchange Response 2008-01-23 08:38:00 <Michael B. Smith> They are talking about an off-line defrag. GOexchange is basically a GUI wrapper around offline defrags and isinteg. They consider downtime only in regards to “unscheduled downtime”. So, if they have scheduled 24 hours of downtime every Sunday – that doesn’t count. Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: René de Haas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 8:30 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: GoExchange Response Had a little look at their website and I agree don’t see much value added either.The thing that puzzles me with the comment below from a satisfied customer, how does doing offline defrags help you with achieving a high uptime since you need to stop services to run it? “Uptime and Availability: "After just one use of GOexchange, our information stores were reduced by 45-50% with thousands of errors, warnings, and inconsistencies corrected. Without GOexchange we would be unable to provide the current level of 99.999% uptime and availability to our customers."” Think I only needed to run it once and I’ve worked with exchange since version 5.5. Also they mention defragging the db. Doesn’t exchange do that by itself??? Unless they mean an offline defrag which MS even says only if necessary. From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 8:13 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: GoExchange Response If Dane Cue would like to join this forum (or another that is not vendor controlled) I’ll be happy to discuss each and every point. Otherwise, why bother? I’ve seen much of the material in that response before. I think a number of other MVPs would agree. He can call me “crazy” or “out in left field” or whatever he wants. And I can do the same. In most of this, he says the same thing that I and others said – just using different word that spin the answer differently. Several times he asserts that I mean something that I did not say. >From an insurance perspective – I absolutely agree – good backups are >important. I don’t know what other value-add they truly provide, other than >disaster recovery. I can provide documentation to back up my statements. I can provide a quote from one of the key developers for ESE that says you don’t do these things on a regular basis. To wit: …I'm glad you'd never recommend a tool that would recommend offline defrag as standard maintenance! :) I generally don't recommend regular offline defrags myself, believing if that becomes necessary it is an issue that should be fixed in ESE or whatever app (Exch/AD) is using ESE. Lucid8 has a vested interest in selling their product. I respect that. They do provide some value-add with reporting. But that is all that I see. And I don’t approve of their marketing. I personally think that it is misleading. Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Tom Strader [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:48 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: GoExchange Response List, I have a response from Lucid8 concerning their GoExchange product and the questions that were posted a week or so back. I've tried to post the response here but the Lyris server says its too large so if anyone want to read their response, please email me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and I'll forward it to you. It is in DOCX format. Sincerely, Tom Strader Server Systems Administrator NC Blumenthal Performing Arts Center 704.379.1285 Office | 704.444.2098 Fax http://www.linkedin.com/in/tstrader "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." ________________________________________ *** The information in this e-mail is confidential and intended solely for the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender by return e-mail delete this e-mail and refrain from any disclosure or action based on the information. *** ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
