Our Redundant Exchange Environment

Hosting.ca has deployed a load balanced Exchange 2007 SP2 cluster allowing for maximum uptime for our customers. As shown in the following image below, we have taken the extra step and added a secondary Exchange server in case an entire failure would occur. In fact, all of the required Exchange servers have been duplicated to avoid any downtime. This method we have deployed is called Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR).

Your typical exchange environment would only include 1 Mailbox Server, 1 Active Directory, 1 Client Access Server, and 1 Hub Exchange Server. Hosting.ca has duplicate servers. Other providers may be using another type of clustering system with shared storage. If that storage becomes corrupt or fail, your email will not be accessible. Hosting.ca is different.

In addition to the normal Exchange services we offer, we have also installed a cluster of Barracuda Spam Server appliances. This assists us in up to the minute spam protection by Barracuda Networks. Please see the Barracuda details page for more services that it provides.

 

 

Advantages of our Cluster Continuous Replication over Single Copy Clusters are:

• No single point of failure:  Our cluster acts as an active-passive node. If one breaks, the other takes over.
• Improved failover behavior:  Since there are two copies of the mailbox data, it will be impossible for data to be lost.
• Offloading backup:  When we perform backups, there will be be no performance loss when accessing your data.

Disadvantages of CCR mode are:

• Price: It is more expensive to deploy this scenario because it requires double the hardware. Since we manage everything with your Hosted Exchange account, you have nothing to worry about.