DR scenario EV 8.0 SP3

[rajeshkumar001]

Hello

Need  your ideas/suggestion on the following scenario.

3 mailbox archiving servers ( EV1,EV2 and EV3) and 1 Journaling Server ( EV Journal). Suppose, one mailbox archiving server goes down ( EV1), can we use journaling server (EV Journal) as DR and continue archiving? or use EV2 or EV3? what are the steps required to do that in either case.

Please note we do not have a hot spare.

Thanks in advance
Rajesh

[Judy_Glazier]

Good Morning Rajesh

The following instructions are from the Enterprise Vault "Administrations Guide.pdf" Chapter 22.  (As long as you have configured your Enterprise Vault Environment using "cnames" for each of your EV Servers and you have configured your EV environment with a "Site Alias" your EV Environment is configured in a Building Block Configuration).

Configuring a working building blocks solution
 
This chapter describes the procedure to follow when an Enterprise Vault server that is part of a building blocks solution has failed or been replaced.
Before you use this procedure it is essential that you have configured a working building blocks solution. The failover will not work unless you have already run
Update Service Locations on the correctly-configured Enterprise Vault site.
 
To configure a working building blocks solution
 
1 Change the DNS alias (cname) of the failed Enterprise Vault server so that it maps to a working server. You must make this change on all the remaining servers
in the Enterprise Vault site.  The method you use to do this depends on the procedures within your organization, as follows:
 
                ■ Using a host file. Update the host files on all the remaining server computers in the Enterprise Vault site.
                ■ Using DNS zones. Update the DNS zones to reflect the new alias.
 
2 Start the Administration Console on any of the servers in the Enterprise Vault site.
 
3 In the left pane, expand the tree until the EnterpriseVaultServers container is visible.
 
4 Right-click the Enterprise Vault Servers container and, on the shortcut menu, click Update Service Locations. You are prompted for the password for the Vault Service account.
 
5 Enter the password for the Vault Service account and click OK.  Enterprise Vault updates the service locations and creates new services as necessary.  At the end of the update a summary screen appears, listing the services on each computer in the site.
 
6 If the Update Service Locations has created any services, start them. 

Judy Glazier

[Liam_Finn1]

I agree with Judy. Seeing as you do not have a second server to fail over to you could possible use Building Block DR scenario to accomplish what you need. Please bare in mind that you may be adding a lot of processing and memory utilization to the server and in doing so you may over utilize the existing hardware by running Exchange and EV on the one piece of hardware.

Ensure you have plenty of memory and do a test to see how it performs to ensure that it can meet the needs of your EV environment plus Exchange.

[rajeshkumar001]

Thank you guys!!! that was helpful.

One more question though, considering our scenario mentioned above, if such failure should occur on a working EV server, what is the best solution to failover, should it be another working EV server or Journal server? and why?

Thanks in advance!!

Thanks
Rajesh

[Liam_Finn1 · Accepted solution]

The best solution should be to the Journal server i think because as far as I'm aware you cant run two instances of EV on the same server. If I remember correctly EV does not run in an active,active solution. By failing to the Journal server you fail to are failing it to an inactive install of EV

The best solution would be a Microsoft cluster but you said you dont have a spare server

[rajeshkumar001]

Thank you Judy and Scanner001.

Rajesh