Do you want to protect your Microsoft® Exchange® 2000 or 2003 server from unplanned downtime?
 
Neverfail for Exchange is a cluster-class high availability solution for Microsoft Exchange® 2000 and 2003 that keeps your email service up and running and ensures availability of the application regardless of the cause of failure.

Effective business performance depends on effective communication. Email applications have become a lifeline for businesses of all sizes and users rely on these applications for business critical communication, scheduling, and collaboration. Downtime of these applications is costly to business productivity and revenue.

• Can your business afford a loss of communications at critical moments? Can your CEO function if his electronic diary is unavailable?
• Will your customers tolerate impaired service? Will they postpone a tender deadline because your email is down?
• Can you guarantee service availability when your business needs it most?

Neverfail for Exchange is the most comprehensive high availability software solution for Microsoft® Exchange® 2000 or 2003 that keeps your Exchange service up and running and creates application certainty for your end-users. Neverfail for Exchange proactively monitors and manages all aspects of the application environment and maintains a complete environment replica as backup in the event of failure.

Unlike other software or hardware solutions that focus on recovering only from hardware and data failures, Neverfail for Exchange provides comprehensive failure protection for all elements of your IT system including data, operating system, system hardware, network and Microsoft Exchange, ensuring continuous application availability.

• How much does you business rely on Microsoft Exchange? 
• Not answer key customer emails about problems they are having? 
• Not receive essential materials because you couldn't communicate with your supplier?
• Not turn up for an appointment because you couldn't view your schedule?
• Not receive and act on that customer order you were expecting today?
• Not send out that report that you had promised to deliver? All because your Exchange server was down?

Details

Neverfail for Exchange replicates the complete application environment to a secondary server to ensure no single point of failure. Neverfail for Exchange constantly monitors your Exchange service and underlying system and proactively manages application or component failures. If a problem occurs, Neverfail for Exchange can either fix the problem or switch-over to the secondary system.

In the event of a major system failure, Neverfail for Exchange will immediately detect the absence of the primary server, will failover, and restart Exchange on the secondary server, continuing service provision without impacting end-users.

Comprehensive failure detection:

• Monitors operating system, hardware, data (file system), network and Exchange application
• Heartbeat between systems to ensure system & network integrity and rapid fault detection
• Monitors key email services (inc. POP3, IMAP, SMTP) as well as Exchange

Replicates complete Exchange environment

• Captures logical I/Os and asynchronously replicates data to secondary server
• Replicates Registry information (including active directory settings)
• Verifies data contents are same on both servers
• Dedicated Neverfail Channel for robust and high performance server to server communications

Dynamic Recovery

• Repairs failed services and applications to keep the Exchange service up and running
• For more serious problems, can restart Exchange or switchover to secondary server

Switchover

• Controlled shutdown of Exchange on the primary server and transfer of control to secondary with minimum downtime and no data loss
• Simple automatic switchback to the primary
• Allows for maintenance and upgrades to take place while secondary runs Exchange

Failover

• Immediate transfer of control to secondary server in the event of a major failure on the primary
• Failover heartbeat can be run over a shared or dedicated network with single of dual channels

Switchback

• Seamlessly switchback after failover to normal application state
• Provides complete operational control after failover

Operational Benefits

• Easy to install - installation can be completed simply by IT staff with minimal downtime of your existing Exchange server
• Works across dissimilar hardware - secondary server can be dissimilar to primary
• Does not require specialist software - works with your existing Exchange software and at the logical I/O level so does not need clustering versions of Exchange or Windows.
• Uses standard networking technologies - servers can be physically separated for site protection.
• Replicates data - does not require shared storage infrastructure but maintains exact copy for greater availability and robustness. Only replicates changes to the data.
• Drastically reduces downtime for ongoing maintenance - Primary server can be upgraded and maintained while secondary server provides service. Primary server resumes service and changed data is automatically copied back.
  System Requirements

Primary server requirements:

• Windows compatible server with 1GB of free system hard disk space and 1GB RAM (512MB for Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003, 128MB for Anti-Virus Software, 326MB for Neverfail for Exchange 2000/2003). Exact requirements depend on application load.
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Advanced Server SP3 or Microsoft Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise Server.
• Microsoft Exchange 2000 Standard or Enterprise SP3 or Microsoft Exchange 2003 Standard or Enterprise.

Secondary server requirements:

• Windows 2000 compatible server with system hard disk space to match primary server and 1GB RAM.
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Advanced Server SP3 or Microsoft Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise Server.
• Microsoft Exchange 2000 Standard or Enterprise SP3 or Microsoft Exchange 2003 Standard or Enterprise.

Licensing

Neverfail for Exchange requires a secondary server for switchover and failover purposes. Licensing is based on the server with the greater number of CPUs within a logical pair.

For more details please contact Consilium and we can answer your questions or organise a demonstration.