Keeping Exchange up and running 24x7 (page 1 of 3)

Back then Email was used by academics and research personnel. As a way to share research and collaborate findings. However early research found that up wards of 70% of all email traffic in the late 1970s and early 1980s was for personal use.

If you had told organisations back then that this messaging system (email) would one day replace the telex machines and the fax machine most of them would have laughed at you. Heaven forbid mentioning that email would one day become a critical application for organisations in the 21 Century.

This is exactly what is happening; Email Applications, such as Microsoft Exchange offer organisations increased business benefits; like improved communication, increased productivity, shorter sales cycles, increased revenue and increased market share.

Microsoft Exchange is a great example of how an email application has become much more than just a messaging system. Today Exchange is being used by organisations for Business critical processes such as purchasing approval, sales quotes invoicing etc.

As the importance of Exchange grows and it begins to offer more businesses benefits, the availability of the Exchange Server starts to play a critical role in the organisation. The onus is placed onto the IT department to guarantee the availability of the Exchange Server(s).

Over and above this, Exchange has been utilised by individual users as an electronic filing cabinet - which in turn is creating huge storage management problems for Exchange and System Administrators, as users mail folders are increasing in size on a daily basis - this exponential growth needs to be managed.

Organisations normally perform Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to help then determine which level of availability best meets their short and long-term objectives for the different applications in their environment. It's fairly straightforward to do a BIA for a ERP system, an Order Entry system or an HR Database as each minute of downtime can be equated to a £# for the downtime.

The organisation can then determine what to spend on the technology solution that will meet the need of the business. Typically an ERP application is Mission Critical and requires the highest level of availability (99.999% uptime). The Order Entry System might be Business Critical and only require 99.99% uptime.

The HR Database will typically only be Task Critical and its level of availability will be far less, somewhere in the region of 98%. Doing a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) on an Exchange 2000 Server to determine it's level of criticality is not so easy, as its difficult to place a £ number against the downtime associated with unavailability of Exchange.

Exchange could be seen as Career Critical - if it's down the CIO will be getting a call from the President and it won't be to ask the CIO to lunch! Email is a very interregnal part of today's organisations and as such it needs to be available 24x7 both for financial reasons and for the companies external image.

Business Critical availability of Exchange can be achieved using the VERITAS Edition for Microsoft Exchange 2000. Over and above the increased availability that is achieved by using VERITAS Edition for Microsoft Exchange 2000 better levels of Storage Management and faster recovery can be attained for the Exchange Server.

The Edition is a tightly integrated suite of VERITAS industry-leading storage management technologies (VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS FlashSnap) engineered specifically for Exchange 2000.