Mailbox Resiliency in Microsoft Exchange

Give users bigger and more reliable mailboxes without spending more.

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Exchange 2010 offers improved storage performance and new resiliency features so users can have bigger and more reliable mailboxes without an increase in cost. With Exchange 2010, you get:

  • Dramatically improved uptime through sub 30-second failover times and the ability to switch between database copies when disks fail
  • Ability to configure a database availability group of up to 16 mailbox servers for automatic, database-level recovery from failures, all managed from within Microsoft Exchange
  • Continuous access to communications even while a mailbox is being relocated via Online Mailbox Move feature
  • The ability to use larger and less expensive disks for Exchange storage

Key features

This is a set of mailbox servers that use continuous replication to update database copies, communicate to manage failures that affect individual databases, and can provide automatic recovery from a variety of failures on the disk, server, and datacenter levels.
Exchange Server database availability groups provide automatic failover at the database level without the complexity of traditional clustering. A database-level disruption, such as a disk failure, no longer affects all users on a server. Because there is no longer a strong tie between databases and servers, it is easy to move between database copies if disks fail. This change, coupled with faster failover times (as little as 30 seconds) can dramatically improve your organization’s overall uptime.
Exchange Server database availability groups make it easier to implement site resilience. They simplify the process of extending data replication between datacenters for site failover. The solution, built into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, can now be used to manage both on-site and off-site data replication and mailbox servers. Database copies can be deployed incrementally to meet the specific availability needs of your organization. Log files can be encrypted for greater security, and can also be compressed to improve transmission time and reduce network bandwidth usage.
Transport servers in Exchange 2010 feature built-in protection against the loss of message queues due to disk or server failure. Servers retain a “shadow” copy of each mail item after it is delivered to the next hop inside your organization. If the subsequent hop fails before reporting successful delivery, the message is resubmitted through an alternate route.
Your organization can rely on the Exchange 2010 high availability infrastructure (which can provide up to 16 replicated database copies) rather than tape backups to recover from failures, helping you to reduce operating costs.
You can add high availability to your Exchange environment after deployment without reinstalling Exchange. For smaller sites, you can deploy a simple two-server configuration that provides full redundancy of mailbox data along with Client Access and Hub Transport roles. These changes put high availability within the reach of organizations that once considered it impractical.
All aspects of high availability administration are handled within Exchange, so you don’t have to manage failover clustering separately in Windows Server, making your environment easier to manage.
Administrators can move mailboxes between databases without taking users offline. Users can connect to their mailboxes as well as send and receive mail while the move is taking place. This reduces user downtime and gives administrators the flexibility to perform system maintenance during business hours instead of during nights and weekends.
Administrators can control how long deleted and edited email is kept in the Recoverable Items Folder and accidental deletions can be recovered without the affected email message having to be restored from a backup.
Exchange 2010 delivers up to a 70 percent reduction in disk IO over Exchange Server 2007 and a 90 percent reduction in disk IO over Exchange Server 2003. This means that more disks meet the minimum performance required to run Exchange, driving down your storage costs.
IO patterns are optimized so that disk writes do not come in bursts. This removes a barrier that had previously limited the use of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disk drives.
Exchange 2010 is more resilient to storage problems. When minor disk faults cause corruption, Exchange can automatically repair the affected database page by using a copy of the database that is configured for high availability. With automatic detection and repair of data corruption from minor disk errors, you can take advantage of lower-cost storage options while you maintain system reliability.
Exchange 2010 can be deployed with up to 16 replicated copies of each mailbox database, and with fast database-level failover, administrators can swap failed drives with minimal impact to your users. Exchange can also automatically repair database pages affected by minor disk faults by using a copy of the database that is configured for high availability. These application-level redundancy features allow RAID-less (JBOD) storage configurations to be used, which can result in dramatic cost savings.

Why Microsoft?

Enable large mailboxes at low cost

Enable large mailboxes at low cost

Simplified database management

Simplified database management

Cloud-like scalability, on-premise

Cloud-like scalability, on-premise

For more reasons why click here
For more reasons why click here

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