Mission Impossible: Restoring Exchange in 30 Seconds Users can use a crashed Exchange server 30 seconds after restoration is started using a new BakBone RDP product which works with SQL Server too. What clever trick is being used? BakBone's NetVault: Real-Time Data Protector (RDP) product actually restores the application first and then streams the data in afterwards. Full …
Exchange is such an architectural bag of nails. Still hardly a 5 9's available fully redundant system is it. How the hell to M$ get away with flogging this crap and more to the point, why do suckers still buy it? It beats be, it really does. And then their partners develop apps that attempt to address it's fundemental shortcomings to try to bring it somewhere close to an enterprise scale messaging platform and still failing.
Just wondering.
I used Netvault for about 3 years up to some 2 years ago. Version 7.1-7.3 if I recall correctly, on FreeBSD, various Windows servers, Linux, Solarisx86 and SolarisSPARC, all clients with the encryption plugin. It had many many issues. Plugins that worked on some platforms but not on others. Backups that didn't work for mysterious reasons. Installs that failed for equally mysterious reasons. Inadequate support. Reporting was a pain, and the stability of the product left much to be desired. You think it might have been me being totally inept at using the software but...there were others like me. The common opinion was that BakBone typically used us as bughunters.....
To up the joy they used normal server-based licensing for normal functions but client side modules like the encryption module required a specific client-bound license. Based on a machine_id which was based on a combination of host-id, ip address, mac address and some other stuff. Meaning that every time you changed an IP address of a host you'd have to change the license key. Rather....unpleasant as you'd have to wait for the BakBone license guys to give it to you.
Maybe that has changed these days but for some reason I'd only believe this 30 second restore when I see it, not when I read it. Especially the client-side licensing was a pain and as this feature requires a specific client-side plugin.....
It takes about one and a half seconds to bring my Postfix and Dovecot daemons back up, including full user data, plus maybe another second or two for SpamAssassin and Amavis.
If they were to ever crash, that is. Five years down the line (ok, originally using Courier instead of Dovecot), I've never had a crash, not once.
What's this Exchange thing then? Sounds pretty poor.
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