[IMail Forum] How to restore a Imail server in 15 minutes

[Imail Tom]

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. 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 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.   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