Question : Problem: Offsite Disaster Recovery/Replication/DFS Questions...

Ok we're beginning to look at real DR solutions and I have some questions pertaining to the different methods I've found so far.  In addition we're looking at using our second location as a potential hotsite for critical systems, namely AD, Exchange, ERP..

1) How feasible is it to use DFS with a secondary location as a DR solution?
2) Same as above except with replication?
3) Are there any well-tested hardware solutions that could be added to a tape rotation
4) Can you guys give me some examples of either DR systems that you use or know of?

I might be missing an integral question here.. if I am please chime in, this is my first foray into the DR realm.

Thanks!

Answer : Problem: Offsite Disaster Recovery/Replication/DFS Questions...

We have a rack in a DR site with two servers.
DR site is connected to our prod site by VPN.

Two servers in the DR site , a DC and a cold Exchange server.

AD replication keeps the AD servers synced

Doubletake keeps the prod and the DR exchange servers synced in real time.

In the event of an Exchange server failure Doubletake does an automatic failover to the DR site.

Quick and almost seamless. End users would'nt notice much with Offline Storage enabled, fails over in a few minutes.

If we lost the entire prod site we call in our tapes from offsite, go to the DR centre where we are supplied with five servers (over and above the two racked servers).

We use Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery to do bare metal restores to the supplied servers using the Symantec boot CD and an external USB Drive.

Restore Anywhere means we can restore the images to different hardware, no rpobs.

We then restore the apps and data volumes using a combination of tape and imaging.



Then we install VMWare Server on each machine, use SBESR to restore images to the VMWare servers.

End up with 10 servers running on 5 physical boxes, each box runs one OS locally and one OS virtually.

Did our full DR test last month, worked really well.

Why restore just your critical apps when you can restore the lot.

I think the next step up for us would be VMWare infrastructure and two replicating SANS.

Anyways Symantec System Recovery Server and Doubletake is the winning combo for us at this point in time.

Not sure if you could consider DFS a DR technology, I'd rather rely on Doubletake for any kind of replication.