SBS 2008 and backup mirror?

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Stu Posted: Sun, Oct 26 2008 8:33 AM

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Hi, just found this informative site.

I am a bit of a beginner to SBS servers, I have set up a couple of SBS 2003 servers in the past, so have some knowledge, but I am in no way an expert on them.

I am looking for a solution where I have a primary server set up in one office, and a backup mirror server running at a second, remote location.  They would be connected via VPN.  Basically, the idea is to have a backup server that is always up-to-date, that can step in in the event of a failure on the primary server.

I am aware that with SBS 2003, you cannot use another SBS server on the same domain.  But I notice with SBS 2008 Premium, you get a Server 2008 licence.  Can anybody tell me if this second server could act as a mirror for AD and Exchange data?

Thanks

Stu

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tezfair replied on Tue, Nov 4 2008 5:32 PM

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Im pretty sure this isn't possible, both in terms of the role of the single SBS box and licensing.

your describing clustering which I don't believe is possible under any SBS / EBS version.

Only chance you have (and I have yet to try it out) is to Hyper V your domain and take snapshots and vpn those back to say an XP machine or basic server, then restore the snapshots back to an offline clone server. You would need to have at least 5 user cal for the install of the server. whether the rest of the CALs are transferable would be down to the type of CAL (OEM or VOL).

At the moment im 3Gb short of ram on our server so have not yet done an install, but I believe Hyper V is now supported in SBS.

Tez

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Stu replied on Wed, Nov 5 2008 12:02 PM

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Thanks for the reply tezfair. 

I am not aware of what Hyper V even does.  I have had a browse around but still having difficulty getting my head around what exactly it does!

I think I might just use the built-in backup utility to perdiodically backup to a remote share.