Ferris Research: Exchange Reliability and Its Impact on Organizations

April 3 2006

Disclaimer -- I haven't read the report I'm linking to here, yet...but from the contents and quotes posted on Ferris's website, it sounds like a good one:

  • "Exchange administrators feel burdened by the daily and weekly tasks required to build and maintain a highly reliable Exchange solution. Better tools will reduce this burden."
  • "Key Trends and Observations
        Exchange Requires Constant Attention
        It's Very Difficult to Diagnose Exchange Problems
        Monitoring the Environment Helps Alleviate Downtime
        Full Redundancy Is Not Built Into Exchange"
and my favorite, "Why is technology for fully redundant systems still not available?"  Sure it is -- it's called Lotus Notes/Domino.

Link: Ferris Research: Exchange Reliability and Its Impact on Organizations > (Subscriber access only; via Ferris weblog)

Ed Brill Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [12]

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  1. 1  Mike "5 Things Wrong with SharePoint" Drips http://forevervoyaging.blogspot.com | 4/3/2006 11:14:02 AM

    Ed, I'm beginning to detect an air of bias towards Lotus Notes/Domino in your postings. I could be wrong though as I have't had any coffee yet this morning. Just call it intuition.

  1. 2  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 4/3/2006 11:15:40 AM

    I'd love to read this, but sadly I doubt my organisation will pay for it. :-(

    By the way, you missed the final, most important part of the Table Of Contents in your cut-and-paste:

    "Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery Are Often Tradeoffs"

    HAH!

    I get excellent fault tolerance AND easy disaster recovery with Lotus Domino. If one of the mail cluster servers dies, the other takes the strain. If we havea disaster, we invoke the DR plan - and just restore the data from last night straight onto the relpacement hardware. Easy.

    I can't quite see where the tradeoff is? I seem to have both, yet have done nothing special... ;-)

  1. 3  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/3/2006 11:16:26 AM

    @1 see { Link } :)

  1. 4  Jerry Glover http://www.jerryglover.com | 4/3/2006 12:37:12 PM

    @2 You have chosen wisely. The way to bliss and inner peace comes through Lotus. Neither the virus du-jour nor fault-tolerance and disaster recovery shall disturb your tranquility. :-)

  1. 5  Dave  | 4/3/2006 1:51:29 PM

    Couldn't you rephrase the first bullet point as:

    "All administrators of any kind feel burdened by the daily and weekly tasks required to build and maintain any solution. Better tools will reduce this burden."

  1. 6  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 4/4/2006 3:05:26 AM

    Never mind, I'm sure the next time Microsoft completely change the Exchange architecture and make their customers go thru yet another rip and replace things will improve. When's that gonna be? 2010? 2011? Or they could have Domino in 2006.

  1. 7  Danny Lawrence  | 4/4/2006 10:06:47 AM

    @2 Heck, Philip, you could cluster your Domino server to a local server AND one in the DR site (3-way active clustering, try that with Exchanged!), and then in case of disaster the users would be failed over to the DR site server (I know it wouldn't be THAT simple, but you would have minimal data loss and not a lot of downtime).

    @5 Exchanged needs better rools, Domino for the most part already has them (or an acthitecture that doesn't require them). 5 years ago I consolidated a medium sized organization's Domino servers. I ran into the admin there about 6 months ago, and he said "You know those servers just keep on going, we never have to do anything with them. Even when we moved the server room, we just shut them down, unplugged them and moved them to the new room and they came right back up".

  1. 8  david racicot  | 4/4/2006 4:20:48 PM

    @7. So what happens to an Exchange server when you shut it down, unplug it, and move it? Does it come back up?

  1. 9  Danny Lawrence  | 4/5/2006 9:09:27 AM

    @8, I have no idea, I suspect that they do, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. By relating my friend's comments I was saying that he didn't "feel burdened by the daily and weekly tasks required to build and maintain" his Domino servers. It is also possible that when he moved some of his non-domino servers they didn't "come right back up". BTW What happens when you set up a 3-way active cluster of Exchange servers?

  1. 10  david racicot  | 4/5/2006 9:31:28 AM

    @9. I was making a funny @8. Actually, I read somewhere in Ed's blog? that the Domino servers don't always come back up, because they have never had to have been turned off before and sometimes the power switches on the hardware are stuck :-).

  1. 11  Arjan Radder http://watsonsworkplace.com | 4/12/2006 8:08:19 AM

    Hi Ed,

    Great stuff on the Google mailbox trick! Will certainly try this. Also check my version of the Boss Loves Lotus at: { Link }

    I gave these during LCTY in Netherlands last week, curious about your feedback;-)

  1. 12  Arjan Radder http://watsonsworkplace.blogspot.com | 4/12/2006 8:09:34 AM

    Would be great if you could also link to my blog, I´ve got yours on mine already;-)!