With huge business impacts and negative publicity looming behind any type of e-mail outage, the impact becomes more significant. Exchange downtime and data loss can occur on many different levels with greatly varying degrees of probability. The fact of the matter is that e-mail interruptions are inherently unavoidable. Also, more often that not the “most manageable – quick fix” of interruptions snowball into much bigger issues that require days and sometimes weeks to fully resolve. No matter the size of the outage, it is important to realize the impact of the event, what it involved and, most importantly, how to handle the situation the next time it happens. This requires IT organizations to look closely at whether or not their current Exchange data protection technologies and processes are sufficient to meet the fast and often granular recovery needs of their organization.
The first step to any adequate protection for e-mail systems is identifying what is best for a particular environment. Most companies rely on Microsoft Exchange Server, which leads to a particular data protection approach with specific criteria. Data protection for Microsoft Exchange is driven by two user requirements: recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) ― the speed by which you are able to recover and resume minute-to-minute operations, as well as the age of the Exchange data recovered.
When weighing Exchange data protection options, such as traditional backups to tape or disk, snapshots, replication or real-time continuous protection, IT managers must first have a crystal clear understanding as to the expectations of their organization surrounding Exchange recoverability – as well as the availability. Is Exchange truly business critical in that it’s closely tied to their organization’s ability to generate revenue and provide high levels of customer service? What do their users expect in terms of RPOs and RTOs? What are the demands of regulatory agencies and the associated compliance requirements?
Once you have answered these questions and implement a reliable data protection strategy for your e-mail system, you will be armed with the ability to bring your business back on the grid when an unexpected event occurs. It is difficult to know just how stranded you would feel without having experienced a failure, but it is not difficult to look ahead, be prepared and empower your business.
For those of you who tuned in for the original Shameless Product Plug and came back for the sequel, Shameless Product Plug II, we bring you the third cinematic debut in this ongoing series. In Shameless Product Plug III, I lend my voice talent to a demo of NetVault: FASTRecover’s Virtual On-Demand Recovery (VODR) technology.
VODR is really starting to grab the attention of those responsible for the protection and availability of Exchange, SQL Server and critical Windows File Servers. NetVault: FASTRecover is the only product available today that offers VODR – allowing very large data objects to be made available for use almost immediately after recovery has been initiated. For example, as you’ll see in this short clip, Exchange databases can be mounted BEFORE the recovery has been completed, allowing users to send and receive emails. Grab some popcorn and check it out!
Great opportunity to learn from one of the best in the business when it comes to the protection and recovery of Exchange – Devin Ganger, Exchange MVP, Microsoft Certified Master Exchange 2007 and author of multiple books and Microsoft white papers will be hosting a webcast called “Overcoming Exchange Failures – Insights from an Industry Expert” this Wednesday, 9/23 at 11am Pacific.
If Exchange is closely tied to your organization’s ability to generate revenue or provide high levels of customer service, this is a great session for you to join! Devin will share guidelines for Exchange protection and recovery to address issues including:
over-running Exchange backup windows
media failures
database corruption
and loss of an entire Exchange Server
I’ll be joining Devin during this webcast to run NetVault: FASTRecover through its paces, which includes Virtual On-Demand Recovery (VODR). With VODR, you are able to make very large data objects available for use almost immediately after recovery has been initiated. Access to recovered data is made available as soon as a brief recovery setup phase has been completed – without waiting for the full recovery to complete. Tune in and watch.
Eliminating backup windows may seem like a pie-in-the-sky dream for your organization, but it is an achievable and afforable reality. Today at BakBone we rolled out NetVault: FastRecover. This new BakBone solution provides disk-based, real-time data protection capabilities for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Windows file servers, while giving users the power of extremely fast recovery to any point in time. Also available soon as an optional pre-configured appliance, NetVault: FASTRecover provides simplified plug-and-play deployment that reduces the level of expertise required for installation and administration. Customers can recover protected data to an alternate physical server or virtual machine in as fast as 30 seconds. NetVault: FASTRecover enables this enterprise-class functionality at compelling price points unseen in the market before.
