If your email is delivered to an Exchange server and your exchange server
goes down for
maintenance or another reason, you need to ensure that your email is
continued to be delivered to a backup server offsite. We can offer
this service for as little as £70 per year for a reliable service based in
Manchester Tele-city. 99.999 % up time.
Technical Explanation:
Customer should have a full-time internet connection so mail will normally go directly to them as they are the primary MX. In the event their connection goes down mail will instantly start being rejected so will attempt delivery to the secondary MX, this puts mail into the BMX system. The BMX system will regularly attempt to forward the mail on to its final destination (that pointed to by the primary MX) and when the customer gets back on line they receive all the mail which has been spooled.
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10 Steps for a disaster recovery plan
Active Directory Disaster recovery
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DEVELOP A COMPLETE DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN. EXPOSE HOLES IN YOUR NETWORK. DEVELOP AN EFFECTIVE DATA BACKUP STRATEGY.
Whether by human error, hardware failure, electrical disruptions, or natural disaster, system failures simply WILL happen. The most effective way to lessen the impact and recover from them quickly is careful preparation -- done today -- so your recovery plan is in place when you'll need it!
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NETWORK CARD FAILURES
Normally, replacing a faulty network card is no big deal. But the process can take 15 to 20 minutes to complete, assuming that you have a spare network card on hand. Here's how to reduce the downtime.
If you have a free slot in the server, install a spare network card. Configure the card (all but the IP address), and then disable it. Your server will run as if it only contains one network card. If that card fails, simply move the cable to the new card, enable the new card, disable the old card, and set the IP address. You could have the server back online within four or five minutes.
If you don't have room for a second network card, make sure you have a spare network card on hand that's identical (same brand and model) to the installed network card.
POWER SUPPLY FAILURES
Although it's never a bad idea to keep a spare power supply on hand, there's a better way of dealing with a power supply failure. Several companies make computer cases that contain a second power supply, which will take over if the primary power supply unit fails.
CLUSTERING
Perhaps the best way of dealing with a hardware failure is through the use of clustering, such as fault-tolerant clustering or load-balancing clustering. The clustering model we're talking about involves having two servers that are connected through a dedicated network link. This link is used by each of the two servers to monitor the status of the other server.
If one server fails, the other server instantly takes over. What makes this possible is that both servers share a common hard disk array; the two machines aren't working with copies of a set of data but are actually sharing the same data.
Clustering is an effective safeguard, if you can afford the higher cost. As long as you use a fault-tolerant hard disk array and uninterruptible power supplies, a clustered server can approach 100 percent server uptime. This type of clustering also requires you to use Windows 2000 Advanced Server, which is more expensive than the standard version of Windows 2000 Server.
A SPARE SERVER
If a full-blown cluster isn't in the budget, you can still minimize your network's downtime. It's smart to keep spare memory, a spare video card, etc., on hand in case a component fails.
Also consider configuring a spare server. Then, if a failed component causes server failure, you can swap out the part and get the server back online. But if you can't quickly determine the cause of the problem, you have a spare server on hand with the exact same hardware, which can help reduce downtime.
DOCUMENTATION
It's also important to have solid network documentation available. Your network documentation should be easily accessible to others who may need to use it in case of a failure, ideally stored in a single binder.
Make sure you have contact information for your entire technical support staff, the building maintenance staff (in case you have to get into the attic or under the crawl space or something), and all of your hardware and software vendors.
It's also a good idea to have a network diagram. Your diagram doesn't have to show individual PCs, but it should show the servers as well as the hubs, routers, subnets, etc. You might also consider diagramming sites and dial-up connections. The more detail your diagrams have, the more they will help you during a disaster.
Call - 08700 66 44 80
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