Though the technological reasons to protect Exchange systems may be self evident, there are quantifiable fiscal reasons to protect these messaging systems as well. The dollar value of any given data-set may be difficult to calculate, but the cost-savings of avoiding even a single Exchange outage can easily be determined. In most organizations, there are at the very least one or two subsets of end-users who cannot continue to work without these systems functioning. Even if these groups might not regularly produce revenue in the form of direct sales or billable engagements, salaries, benefits and fixed costs still accrue during an outage.

Therefore, the loss of the messaging systems for even a few hours could easily result in thousands of dollars in budget outlay without recouping a single dollar in productivity. For revenue-generating groups, the cost of this downtime is even more easily quantifiable. Avoiding even one of these outages is not only a good idea for the IT department, but for the CFO’s office as well.

Complete protection of Exchange requires a lot more than management of on-site and off-site tape backups.While traditional tape backup is an excellent tool for long-term archiving, true recovery for the sake of business continuity requires real-time data protection which enables disaster recovery and high availability. Having a solution that is cost-effective, hardware independent and scalable is something every IT manager should seriously consider.

This whitepaper is meant to provide a brief technical overview of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2000 and 2003 survivability requirements as well as present how a solution such as Double-Take® can meet your company’s availability and data protection needs for Exchange.The need to protect systems and data is readily apparent.

The remainder of this document will cover:
What Exchange data needs to be protected for business continuity
How Double-Take protects Exchange data
How to ensure Exchange availability
- With Stand-Alone Exchange Servers
- With Front-End/Back-End Exchange systems
- With Microsoft Cluster Services and Exchange
Other considerations for Exchange

Download pdf Protecting Microsoft Exchange