Small Business DR

[pietmuis]

Hi Guys,

Anyone have any ideas around doing DR for a Microsoft SBS with Exchange to a didicated server at a hosting provider? If your main site fails you can go and collect the server at the hosting provider and bring it back onsite.

I am thinking of doing this via 4 meg ADSL using a product like Double Take or Neverfail.

ESXi and Veeam will be a bit out of budget.

Any ideas or shared experience will be appreciated!

Thanks,

 

[Telasera]

Hi Pietmuis,

Are you trying to setup a redundant SBS solution so if your primary server (office) is offline your clients can connect to your backup (DR) SBS server hosted at the data centre ?

If your main site fails you can go and collect the server at the hosting provider and bring it back onsite.

This is unlikely unless you are collocating your own hardware at the hosting provider.

 

[pietmuis]

Thanks for the reply Telasera.


I am not sure that connecting via a VPN to a host server will be a workable solution, but I have never tested this so I might be wrong?

There must be some providers that will accept the clients’ hardware in their datacentre?

thanks

 

[Telasera]

It depends on your requirements and acceptable downtime.

If you would like to replicate your SBS setup to another server hosted at another provider then "collect" that server in the event of an outage.. it might be easier and faster to have a hot standby server onsite that is being replicated.

Vmware Esxi has a free version with a 32gb memory limit which should be ample for a SBS install.

However you should still consider having a backup of your data offsite in the event of loss to both servers or theft.

 

[bekdik]

Thanks for the reply Telasera.


I am not sure that connecting via a VPN to a host server will be a workable solution, but I have never tested this so I might be wrong?

There must be some providers that will accept the clients’ hardware in their datacentre?

thanks

Where are you located?

 

[gkm]

If your main site fails you can go and collect the server at the hosting provider and bring it back onsite.

Would it not be a bit risky to transport your backup server? What if somebody drops it or something? Surely it would be safer to just copy your data back from it, even if a bit slow.

 

[czotos]

As far as I know, SBS can't be installed using a public IP address (which will probably be the case with a hosted dedicated server).

You can only install SBS on a server with a private (local) IP address - i.e. 192.168.0.1

 

[guest2013-1]

A cheaper solution would be metrofile/tape backups with an onsite "hot" backup.