Hi there,
We are looking into setting up a disaster recovery center for our servers that includes a mail cluster and a blackberry server.
Is there any guide/step-by-step information on how to get this achieved or do we just copy over data and bring the new servers up (sounds too simple… eh!) … I saw a couple of old posts for disaster recovery that did’nt have a lot of info in them …
I am just trying to visualize this as a replica of a cluster and any issues could arising thereof … The questions that came to my mind were:
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Do we have to mirror both the primary and cluster on the disaster recovery site or just add the remote DRP server to the existing cluster.
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Do all servers need to be on the same subnet? Can it be done using public IP on DRP site.
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For Blackberry server do we just setup the DRP server as a cluster. Any config changes required on the current Domino/ BES server ?
Thanks for any pointers and help!
Ayaz
Subject: Disaster recovery questions
Regarding the Blackberry, check the blackberry website and get the various DR documents they have. While you can cluster the servers to copy the states databases between them that’s about all you get out of the process.
You didn’t mention which SQL database you’re using for the Configuration database but you should plan on using SQL2005. I’m using the Express Edition which RIM has just started supporting. You’ll also need to be on version 4.1.2 minimum for this.
Now there are basically two methods for DR’ing a BES. The first is to have a spare server at the DR site and simply do a restore of everything from backup’s making sure that the server name is the same (OS level as well as Domino level). This allows you to use a single SRP ID but you must insre that the production server is completely down so you don’t have a conflict with two servers trying to connect to RIM. This is disable both and require a call to them to reactivate.
The second method involves two BES (two SRP ID’s) sharing a common Configuration database. Now you might see comments at the Blackberry site about replicated SQL (called Publish.Subscription) that would lead you to believe you could have two copies of the SQL database working and keeping in synch. They don’t support this model. So this approach has a problem in that you only have a single SQL database, which could fail leaving you disabled. You can restore the SQL database to the DR server but must run a Cutover Tool, which RIM will supply. The problem is that they only support the cutover tool through email, no direct voice support. This to me is a problem as when you activate the DR and have problems that’s when you need to talk to someone.
There are third party tools like NeverFail that seem to offer a smooth transfer between 2 BES servers but aside from the additinoal SRP ID they can be expensive. Expensive is of course all relative depending on how important and how fast you must get the DR BES operational.
Clustering the Domino servers is straight forward for email. I’d recommend a one for one cluster if you’re running multiple email servers as this is simple to implement. You’d just configure the DR email servers with a parameter in the notes.ini file to prevent users from accessing these servers. THis is necessary as user WILL failover to the DR servers during times of heavy traffic on your production mail servers, unless you don’t care about people accessing these servers.
Subject: Disaster recovery questions
Thank you all for your help!very much appreciated…
Ayaz
Subject: Disaster recovery questions
Why not add the new (DR) server into an existing cluster? Fail over would be automatic, little or no intervention required. The srevers shouldn’t have to be on the same sub-net, just make sure your clients are able to locate the new server if DNS is working properly.
I haven’t supported BB in a few years so can’t help you with that one.