exchange 2003 server died whilst on vacation

[bearxor]

Originally Posted by Oyeve

We have 60 users and around 30 mobile devices. The cost of hosting costs a lot. I wanted to redo the email server from the start but waited too long obviously. The annual cost of hosting is like 3 to 4 times the cost of having it in house. I will confer with the brass though.

For that many users (which isn't that many) I'd probably consider hosting. I know it's the standard IT thinking to be in control of everything end-to-end, but some things are worth letting go, IMHO.

If you had a couple hundred users, I'd probably keep it internal.

[Oyeve]

Originally Posted by theevilsharpie

For 60 users, the cost of Exchange, Windows Server 2008, and the necessary client licenses is about $8,000. That does not include the cost of hardware, supporting software (e.g., backups, spam filtering, etc.), administration, bandwidth of hosting, electricity, and a variety of other expenses, all of which adds thousands to the price.

In contrast, one year of Office 365 Exchange hosting is $3,000.

Unless you're in a business sector that qualifies for heavily discounted Microsoft software, the math simply doesn't favor on-premises hosting. Hell, even if you did get discounted software, it's still likely cheaper to host it.

3k? Where?

[theevilsharpie]

Originally Posted by Oyeve

3k? Where?

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/offic...are-plans.aspx

Under the $4/month hosted e-mail option.

[kevnich2]

You could also do google apps for business for $5/month. I know alot of people like the google interface rather than the outlook interface for email. Uptime seems to be better with it as well from my past experience. Just another option.

[imagoon]

Originally Posted by TerryMathews

I don't care what you're app is. Properly configured, you can stand up a duplicate machine effectively immediately with a backup of the virtual disk images and/or dedicated HD(s).

That's one of the bullet points on every VM sales sheet.

See now I agree with you, but you have moved from something some one can do with ESXi / Hyper V free editions to a solution that is full on Enterprise-y with things like full SAN to SAN replication and or some sort of DAS to DAS full replication which is way out of scope for this issue because if he had this, he wouldn't have a problem.

OP: I do agree with the other people mentioning taking a look at hosted exchange / google. Last I checked the break even point on the 2 solutions was some where in the in the 200+ users area barring special requirements for HIPAA / SOX.

[dawks]

Originally Posted by TerryMathews

I don't care what you're app is. Properly configured, you can stand up a duplicate machine effectively immediately with a backup of the virtual disk images and/or dedicated HD(s).

That's one of the bullet points on every VM sales sheet.

This wont work with Active Directory, if you have more than one AD server. AD works on USN numbers for replication to handle which record is the latest. If you have two or more working AD servers, and one of them dies, when you try to restore it from a backup, that backup has older USN numbers than what the recently deceased server has and it will cause massive confusion within AD. Unless there's some magic I haven't heard of, your best bet is to start fresh and restore the server from a System State backup or AD Restore mode. Snapshots and VMDK images wont work properly.

[dawks]

Originally Posted by theevilsharpie

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/offic...are-plans.aspx

Under the $4/month hosted e-mail option.

I've been using this service since May of this year, and generally I am pleased. We went with this solution after considering an in house setup, and several other providers. Most other Exchange providers tend to charge $10/user for 1gig. This Microsoft offering is $4/mo for 25gigs. Our internet connection is just a standard cable modem, and is too unreliable for email servers. By paying a slight premium to Microsoft, we dont have to worry about hardware, hardware failures, upgrades, upgrade pricing, electricity or a more reliable (read:expensive) internet connection.

I'll cover some things I've discovered using it these past months. You can do Active Directory Sync with your domain to the exchange servers. I tried this but backed away because you couldn't configure multiple alias's per account, and the single alias had to be configured through ADSIedit IIRC. You can do single sign on with Active Directory, but you'll need a ADFS server available outside your network if you want to have roaming/mobile users (I skipped this option as well since we didnt need it). But you can go the traditional route of just managing users on the web panel, and everything works fine.

Lots of stuff needs to be configured via the powershell command line. Most of the basic stuff is available in the control panel, but more advanced features are powershell. Stability is decent. We've had two events in November, most notably, several users were unable to login/receive messages for 6 hours on a Monday during business hours. besides that, its been relatively stable (and MSFT is offering an automatic 25% refund for violating the 99.9% SLA - max 8hrs downtime allowed per year).

[drebo]

Interestingly enough, one of our customers' Exchange Servers just took a shit this morning. We're migrating them to Hosted Exchange as we speak. It's great when you own your own Hosted Exchange implementation. So easy to sell it to current customers.

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally Posted by Oyeve

All my servers are on 32bit 2k3. Can I install a 64bit server for email in a 32bit server environment? I wasnt planning on upgrading my server until next summer. But I need to get email backup ASAP.

First of all, no offense is intended by what I am about to say. But, have you ever actually installed Exchange 2007 or above? The questions above lead me to believe that you haven't and it is very different from Exchange 2003.

80 users is very small and while I hate beating a dead horse, I'm going to give it another kick -- you really need to host it elsewhere and make someone else responsible for backups, DR, etc.

[Oyeve]

so, I got my MS server 2008R2 installed and MS exchange 2010 up and running. Lot of OST files missing data but we sent the bad array to drivesavers and we hope the VMware files can be copied off.

I have MSX2010 running off of Vmware ESXi 5.x and the performance is pretty damn nice. The install from unboxing to running took 22hrs! Man, I tried and tried to get it hosted but the owners wanted it inhouse. I built a standard w2k server and installed vmware 2.0 on it in the hopes that the data recovery people can fing the VM, then I can load it up offline and collect the data. Sound like a plan?

Am I missing something?

[Fallen Kell]

That sounds about right if they can restore/retrieve the vmdk and vmx files.

I highly recommend making a snapshot of your new system and exporting the snapshot to OVF format, and then save that on something like tape backup or archival DVDs (will probably need to use something like "OVF Tools" to split it into smaller files to fit on multiple DVDs).

[Oyeve]

Originally Posted by Fallen Kell

That sounds about right if they can restore/retrieve the vmdk and vmx files.

I highly recommend making a snapshot of your new system and exporting the snapshot to OVF format, and then save that on something like tape backup or archival DVDs (will probably need to use something like "OVF Tools" to split it into smaller files to fit on multiple DVDs).

Did a full system backup on an external NAS device. I also did a full Acronis image on another NAS.

[Oyeve]

Sweet! Drivesavers got 100% recovery of my data! They loaded the VMs and all looked great! They will be sending the EDB and VDK files overnight. Now to back those babys up!

[TerryMathews]

Originally Posted by Oyeve

Sweet! Drivesavers got 100% recovery of my data! They loaded the VMs and all looked great! They will be sending the EDB and VDK files overnight. Now to back those babys up!

That's great news, should simplify migrating quite a bit. Once you get everything settled, get yourself on a regular backup system. Then sit back, relax, and drink a cold one.