I thought I'd share an old posting to this list, if you decided to take the wipe / reformat route.
- From: Imail Tom
- To: [email protected]
- Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 7:19 AM
- Subject: [IMail Forum] How to restore a Imail server in 15 minutes
- Hi Gang,
- I thought I would share with you a way that you can recover your mail server in 15 minutes. I administer several Imail servers, each with about 2000 domains. Average traffic is about 40,000 in/out emails per day/ per mail server. I run declude AV and Junkmail on all. When a server goes down, I just can't afford to set up a new server, restore from tape, bla bla bla.... I've give you the steps below, so you can implement this in your own environment if you feel it's useful to you. I use this to method to backup multiple mail servers, you could use it for just one, or as many as you like. You only need ONE failover server to backup several production servers.
- Step1:
- Set up a new mail server, name it "SPARE-MAIL", install Imail on it. Keep it on the same version as all your other production servers. Set it up just like it were a real production mail server, with one exception. Keep one hard drive separate, and make it it's own partition, I call mine "Z" drive. It should be big enough to hold the M:\Imail folders from every production server. (I install imail to M:\Imail\)
- Step2:
- Get "robocopy.exe" if you don't already have it. Create a bat file on \\SPARE-MAIL to copy the Imail folders from every production server to this server. Using the /MIR will allow you to mirror the directory structure. Schedule this to run as often as you like, I run it a couple times a day.
- robocopy \\maxmail001\m$\imail z:\MAXMAIL001 /MIR /XD spool /R:1 /W:3 /NP /LOG:z:\MAXMAIL001_copy.log
- robocopy \\maxmail002\m$\imail z:\MAXMAIL002 /MIR /XD spool /R:1 /W:3 /NP /LOG:z:\MAXMAIL002_copy.log
- robocopy \\maxmail003\m$\imail z:\MAXMAIL003 /MIR /XD spool /R:1 /W:3 /NP /LOG:z:\MAXMAIL003_copy.log
- robocopy \\maxmail004\m$\imail z:\MAXMAIL004 /MIR /XD spool /R:1 /W:3 /NP /LOG:z:\MAXMAIL004_copy.log
- robocopy \\maxmail005\m$\imail z:\MAXMAIL005 /MIR /XD spool /R:1 /W:3 /NP /LOG:z:\MAXMAIL005_copy.log
- Step3:
- Create a scheduled task on every production mail server, to write it's registry to \\SPARE-MAIL
- ********************
- C:\WINNT\regedit.exe /E \\spare-mail\z$\Registry\maxmail010\imail_backup.reg HKEY_Local_Machine\SOFTWARE\Ipswitch\IMail
- ********************
- Schedule this to run as often as you like, I run it a couple times a day. The more you run it, the more up to date your mail server will be if you have to recover one.
- Step4:
- Back up \\spare-mail\z$ to scsi array, or, to tape as often as you like for "real" backups, in case you need to restore a mailbox from a couple days ago, and to get backups off site.
- Step5:
- Test your plan, here are the steps to do if a mail server dies. And if a mail server really does die, don't waste time trying to recover the dead server, it will only make your life worse. You can re-write these instructions below to make them more specific, so you can give them to any "somewhat" technical person in your staff, so they can do this if you are unavailable.
Poof! You are back up and running. 90% of your users probably won't notice a difference, except for the ones who store mail on the server. Now you have time to go see if you can get to the hard drive of the old mail server. If you can, just take their old main.mbx file, copy it to the new mail server as restore.mbx.
- Shut down the dying mailserver (for example, MAXMAIL003)
- Stop all Imail services on server Spare-mail
- Rename m:\IMail to m:\IMailbackup
- Copy Folder Z:\MaxMail003 to the M: drive
- Rename the directory:
- m:\MaxMail003 ---> m:\Imail
- Create the following directory:
- M:\Imail\spool (or where ever you keep your spool folder)
- Copy the following directory:
- M:\IMailbackup\spool\web ---> M:\Imail\spool\web
- Run the file:
- Z:\Registry\maxmail003\imail_backup.reg
- Put MAXMAIL003's IP on the server and rename the server
- Reboot
Hope you find this helpful. If you have questions, or see something that can be done to improve the plan, let me know. I've tested this a few times, and it works. I've only had to do it once in a real world scenerio, but it saved my butt, big time....
Tom
From: "Kris McElroy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] How to restore a Imail server in 15 minutes
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 09:03:47 -0500
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9. Put MAXMAIL003's IP on the server and rename
#========================
# Interface configuration
# netsh -c interface dump >c:\primaryMailIP.txt
# netsh -f c:\primaryMailIP.txt
#
#========================
I would also add a scheduled task to export the Network card settings (IP, DNS, Gateway) using netsh. I know some people, including myself, have several IP's on there IMail servers. I use netsh to dump the settings to a Text file then you can run netsh to restore them all back.
Thanks,
Kris McElroy
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Internet Systems Engineer
Duracom, INC.
www.duracom.net
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to
do it."
At 03:18 AM 8/23/2005 -0400, you wrote:
So, its 3 something in toe morning and Im here scanning my mail server for spyware. One of my associates used it to browse some websites and got the sucker infected with all sorts of nasties. Ive spent the better part of 3 days trying to get this thing clean to no avail. While my software will detect the spyware it cannot completely clean it so the apps become active after a reboot.******************************** Visit us at www.yfcs.com ******************************** To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
Im considering a server rebuild but I really dont want to take my only Imail server completely off line for me to wipe the drives and rebuild it from scratch. That will take hours. Oh, its a Compaq Proliant 5000 server running Imail 7.15 HF2. Yes, its old but it works for us. Is there a way to simply reinstall the OS and perhaps some patches without having to totally reconfigure the server or use the Compaq SmartStart app? Im betwixt a hard rock and a concrete wall. Oh, this server is also my primary DNS server as well, running SimpleDNS Plus, just to complicate things.
Any help is Greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me offline.
Thanks!
Troy D. Hilton
Serveon, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
302-529-8640
