"Hot Spare" Server

[DrSwaity]

Hi there,

I have two servers, both with Windows 2003 Standard. What I would like to do is have one a hot spare. Have all the DHCP info, Active directory, shares, IIS 6 setup, and email system be cloned to my second server. The first server does everything, and I just want a clone on the second one. It will be offsite and updated over the internet. Is there a good way to do this? It would be really nice if the second server could "watch" the first server so when it goes down, the second one just takes over seamlessly. Oh, there is also files stored on this, so files would need to be copied over to the second server as well.

Thanks for any help!

[kato2274]

Hi there,

I have two servers, both with Windows 2003 Standard. What I would like to do is have one a hot spare. Have all the DHCP info, Active directory, shares, IIS 6 setup, and email system be cloned to my second server. The first server does everything, and I just want a clone on the second one. It will be offsite and updated over the internet. Is there a good way to do this? It would be really nice if the second server could "watch" the first server so when it goes down, the second one just takes over seamlessly. Oh, there is also files stored on this, so files would need to be copied over to the second server as well.

Thanks for any help!

If you want it to have the ability to "take over seamlessly" you would need to have connectivity to the building it's in. i.e. fibre, wireless antenna, cat5 run (if not too far) etc. if you have that, there is no reason not to run it live all the time as a domain controller. split your dhcp scope in half between the two servers. you could run DFS to replicate shares and have printers installed on both servers. if one goes down the other continues to run.

as far as a spare you can swap in, you could make your server have more than one partition and ghost it after it's setup for the windows install IP information etc. then use a tape with system state restore to restore AD stuff, and a tape with data backup to restore data on the data partition and what not.

if you can run more than one DC live, you should.

[DrSwaity]

Hi kato,

What if the spare server was on a VPN to our network, and used the same active directory as the main server. Then user changes will be updated on both. Then for the data do differential backups over the VPN to a file on the spare? I want to get away from tapes. I use tapes locally, but this is for offsite backups (for redundancy). I would like it to be 100% automated, in case I forget to put a tape in or whatever. And it is offsite just in case we have a fire or theft in our building.

Thanks!

[kato2274]

Hi kato,

What if the spare server was on a VPN to our network, and used the same active directory as the main server. Then user changes will be updated on both. Then for the data do differential backups over the VPN to a file on the spare? I want to get away from tapes. I use tapes locally, but this is for offsite backups (for redundancy). I would like it to be 100% automated, in case I forget to put a tape in or whatever. And it is offsite just in case we have a fire or theft in our building.

Thanks!

depending on the amount of data you have, that would have to be one HEFTY VPN tunnel. I know our network at work we have probably over 250GB we would have to back up. now doing differentials of course would cut that down substansially, but still figure 5-6GB of changed data everyday running through a VPN tunnel with T1's on either side - that's a lot of data to pass and will take a while.

theorectical your idea would work I think. I like the idea of having more than one server ONLINE at all times.

at my job that won't spring the extra 6K (X20) for all of the domains I manage to have another domain controller, so I'm exploring how to do it with linux using samba for file sharing cups for printers etc. planning to finish downloading fedora tonight and am going to give it a go (test) in the morning.

the other thing you MUST consider is this:

if you want this thing to go live from the remote location you better be sure that your VPN tunnel has enough bandwidth not to just backup data at night, but to support the full weight of your network's bandwidth requirements during daily operation. personally I wouldn't trust it.

now getting a fiber run to that building - or getting a nice 54mbs wireless antenna setup or something and using the server as an additional domain controller....I'd be more inclined to believe that would work better.