Windows IT Pro: More on Going Backup-less with Exchange 2010

February 27 2010

Another prime example of how in the Microsoft world that Microsoft giveth with one hand and taketh with the other...

Everything else about the Exchange 2010 storage story pushes the costs of high availability down--it's possible to use commodity hardware (SATA in some cases), no SAN, no RAID, etc. But we went from having the ability in Exchange 2007 to do replication on Windows Standard Edition with SCR and LCR (in combination with one another if desired) to having no HA or replication solution natively available on Windows Standard Edition in Exchange 2010.
In other words, Microsoft is pushing customers to deploy Exchange 2010 on Windows Server Enterprise edition -- which costs 4x Windows Server standard edition at list price.  Multiply out for all the various Exchange 2010 roles, directory catalogs, and of course multiple servers in a cluster, and things add up fast.

The premise of the article itself is interesting -- Lotus Domino clustering for years has offered an architecture where you could consider going without backups, because every clustered server had an identical copy of each NSF.  For that matter, even the local NSF on a replicated Notes client was the same (the one time I ever had a server mailbox corruption, it was faster to replicate my local NSF back up to the server than it was to pull from a backup).  It's interesting to see that admin philosophy has changed in a way that this is now even in the realm of conception and possibility.

Link: Windows IT Pro: More on Going Backup-less with Exchange 2010 > (Thanks, Russ and Chris)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [28]

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  1. 1  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 2/27/2010 7:45:43 PM

    Same for backup is true with 2008SBS Premium. Local backups to disk or tape only. The backup program still exists for doing a backup to remote storage (NAS device), but you cannot easily schedule it. In other words, no GUI schedule, you have to do it locally and write a script to copy it to the NAS. Something one of my clients didn't realize before upgrading from 2003SBS to 2008 SBS.

    Same is true for his SharePoint and SQL server, it's no longer supported to use his remote storage NAS, only local drives.

    Of course there are 3rd party tools that have filled out the backup needs, but they aren't free.

  1. 2  Bill McCuistion http://www.edna1550.com | 2/28/2010 3:07:45 AM

    Even if MS were to provide a "BACKUP" option, what's to say that the "RESTORE" would work? I recently had the opportunity to have to RESTORE a MS-BACKUP file going back to 1986. Guess how many versions of a BACKUP-FILE MS has done since then? Simply put, MS is a joke. I thought that Ray Ozzie would have gotten some sanity instilled by now, but I don't see it, yet.

  1. 3  GarryL  | 2/28/2010 11:12:05 AM

    "Lotus Domino clustering for years has offered an architecture where you could consider going without backups, because every clustered server had an identical copy of each NSF"

    This is very true and very robust. Unfortunatley as an SME we run the Domino/Notes Express licensing and this forbids using clustering, unfortunatley.

    Any plans to change this restriction?

  1. 4  Bill McCuistion http://www.edna1550.com | 2/28/2010 12:04:06 PM

    I seem to recall an instance where Price-Waterhouse had a MAJOR outage from a NOTES ADMIN who ran an agent that deleted all the docs in the NAB. This was years ago, but they didn't have a back-up. Go figure. There is a valid reason for BACKUPS. Multiple replicas are not a panacea.

  1. 5  Bill McCuistion http://www.edna1550.com | 2/28/2010 12:21:53 PM

    To be clear, anyone one that proposed a NO-BACKUP solution, would have to be insane, or criminal, or negligent, or some combination of the above. Just because BACKUPS are inconvenient, there is no viable excuse for not doing the right thing. Of course, if you're the WHITEHOUSE, it might be reasonable to blame lost emails on the wrong backup system. Get real folks.

  1. 6  Bill McCuistion http://www.edna1550.com | 2/28/2010 12:40:53 PM

    That being said, you could, of course, use GOOGLE, who remembers everything you ever type, send, save or chat. What could be more convenient, if you're lazy or slack-minded or too-young to know the difference? Once-upon-a-time, I thought that the IBM/Lotus was cool. Perhaps time-has-past, and now they just want to be seen as cool and hip. My suggestion is that they raise the price to $1M per server and $10K per client and make it a privilege of the rich to run Notes...like it used to be. The race-to-the-bottom is a no-win game.

  1. 7  JFranchetti  | 2/28/2010 1:49:18 PM

    Very valid points here. When my colleagues ask what third-party products are used for replication, HA/Failover and even base archiving -- in which they have paid 6-digit sums for each -- I can say "built-in". Many of them were former Notes shops and agree, and also stress how they miss the rapid application development days as well.

  1. 8  Bill McCuistion http://www.edna1550.com | 2/28/2010 6:25:14 PM

    To my simple mind, one to the greatest strengths of the NOTES-PLATFORM is the NSF file structure. This "document-oriented" database structure has endured for what, some 25-years, and is what backwards-compatible for, hold-on, for-ever. When XML came along, guess-what? Steve Balmer proclaimed that XML was "like a gift from GOD". Guess what, Steve, you should walk down the hall and talk to Ray Ozzie, who got it right to begin with.

    Of course, it makes perfect sense to partition certain databases into "NSF-like" structures. Of course it makes perfect sense to use the NSF-like data structure to house document-oriented data. It is somehow perverted to try to use a SQL-type database to house document-oriented data. Unless, you are someone like Steve Balmer, who has a boss like Bill Gates, who has bought a product like Sybase, and has to capture mind-share in a market they don't understand. It's about time for everyone to get real.

    Email and related messaging is now a commodity. Or, at least that's how the general market considers it. In fact, however, messaging is a business-critical function. If you don't do it right, you can go to jail.

    The REAL-DEAL, however, is not about messaging, but should be about WORK-FLOW. This is where the NOTES/DOMINO platform shines.

    What chaps my ass is the mind-set of the many MS business partners. They knowingly promote and sell BROKEN-SOLUTIONS that are designed to earn them money. In my view, this is not ethical. It is, however, the reality of the market and seemingly OK with business managers. I wonder, however, how many SHAREHOLDERS really know what is going on with THEIR MONEY? I wonder why I don't see more late-night info-mercials about shareholder-suits for MS-based companies. Perhaps I should go back to law-school and specialize.

    Granted, the NOTES/DOMINO platform is kind of hard to get your head around. Especially if you went to a school that only taught you SQL (or MS-Acess, or MS-Excel, or MS-BS). For my money, I'd like to hear more about IBM/Lotus support for OPEN-STANDARDS, like W3C, JAVA, PHP, SQL, etc. And, how that brings SHAREHOLDER-VALUE to companies.

    I know that Ed Brill wants to integrate their PERSONAL and BUSINESS technology platforms. I believe this is a fatal flaw in the overall economy. It is not often that BUSINESS needs and PERSONAL needs overlap. What happens TOO-OFTEN is that personal home-based technologies work themselves into the workplace, where then, these consumer-based solutions become the defacto business-solution.

    IBM, in its unique position, could advance the use of consumer-based technologies, with the idea of moving them into the business market. IBM could, for example, promote LINUX into the home, where it would find its way into the workplace. Same for OPEN-OFFICE. Same for the NOTES-CLIENT. Same for SAMETIME. Same for DB2 (Cloudscape). Same for PHP. Same for Eclipse. Same for OS/2. Yeah, OS/2. I'd let my refrigarator run OS/2 and network it with my microwave and HDTV, so that my movies, pizza and popcorn are timed right.

    Ed, et al, are you listening?

  1. 9  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/1/2010 4:10:46 AM

    I read in an article on The Register that Exchange 2010 now stores everything once per user rather than in a shared object store... { Link }

    ... which is ironic because Exchange fan-boys would always slam Domino for doing that, and claim that Exchange used less disk space because items were stored once per storage group. Now while Lotus have provided DAOS, Exchange has gone in the other direction. So doesn't this mean Exchange 2010 creates more data to backup than previous versions?

  1. 10  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 3/1/2010 9:41:18 AM

    @Bill - "Ed, et al, are you listening?" I gave up reading after your second caps-laden comment. Seeing that there are 9 comments here and 5 are from you, maybe you need to focus more to get a better response.

    @9 - Exchange 2010 isn't creating more data to backup because the SCOS implementation in previous releases was broken as designed. Microsoft finally decided to just kill the useless feature and simplify their data storage, which was an intelligent move. Their scramble to make this look like a good thing is humorous.

  1. 11  Alan Head  | 3/1/2010 11:22:14 AM

    As a Notes Admin its great to have something tangible that everyone understands to beat MS with. DAOS is so good that its getting the attention of CTOs - for something as nerdy as storage this is quite remarkable. IBM have the opportunity to build considerable momentum with this feature, its a winner on so many angles and amazingly appears to be bug-free and painless to implement. 40% reduction in storage for us is nice to have but what really makes it a game-changer is the reduction in backup times and therefore server downtime. DAOS is as big a differentiator as replication and the security model have always been.

  1. 12  paul robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 3/1/2010 2:34:16 PM

    Hey, a topic here I actually know something about!

    DAGs beat clustering in pretty much every conceivable way. They're lighter on system resources, easier to manage, more performant, and less complex. Exchange did a good thing in following Lotus' lead in this area. Of course, there are a number of other areas-- mobile and wireless access, cloud integration, and anti-spam/anti-malware are the first ones that come to mind-- where Exchange is still handily ahead of Domino.

    DAGs only require Windows Enterprise for mailbox servers, not for any other role. There has never been a requirement to run Windows Enterprise on domain controllers (which I guess is what Ed means by "directory catalogs") or on other Exchange roles. CAS, HT, and unified messaging[1] roles are all essentially stateless and don't have any real persistent data to store, so their HA requirements are best met by redundancy, not by HA.

    Bonus: you can realize some impressive savings by virtualizing these roles and taking advantage of the way MS licenses Windows Server for VMs. (Disclaimer: what I know about MS licensing you could write on a square of toilet paper, which is probably where it should be written anyway.)

    Having said all that, Ed, it's a little disingenuous of you to highlight the text you did without acknowledging that it was a comment from a reader, not an original part of my article.

  1. 13  Daniel Lieber http://iiui.com | 3/1/2010 2:58:14 PM

    @12 (Paul): DAG (Database Availability Group) are very similar in concept to how IBM Lotus Domino clustering operates. Any member of a Domino cluster can take over tasks for the data it has in common. The other value areas you are stating where Exchange is "handily ahead of Domino" are speculative at best. Mobile & Wireless Access, cloud integration, anti-spam/anti-malware are all areas that both products have capabilities and partners to deliver. Microsoft is not "handily" ahead of Domino; these are both mature platforms.

  1. 14  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/1/2010 3:00:02 PM

    Is Bill McCuistion related to LH Putgrass? { Link }

  1. 15  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 3/1/2010 3:07:42 PM

    @12 - DAG's might beat Windows or Exchange clustering, but it's still a whole lot easier in Domino. It would be interesting to see a side by side comparison of similar workloads to see the performance impact.

    Just so you know, licensing Windows in a virtual world can be even more costly. By building out virtually rather than putting multiple services directly on the box you end up paying for a lot more Windows licenses. Or at least that's where we ended up when we went through that exercise.

  1. 16  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/1/2010 3:09:56 PM

    @12 I must have missed the quotation marks, apologies. At any rate Daniel has already provided some perspective on why this is still different in the Domino world.

  1. 17  paul robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 3/2/2010 10:30:28 AM

    @13 the areas I mentioned are ones where Exchange ships features in the box, with no additional licensing or feature costs. I'm not sure that's true for Domino.

    @16 I'd be interested in that as well, but not interested enough to do it all by myself.

  1. 18  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/2/2010 11:28:00 AM

    @17 Domino clustering is part of Domino Enterprise Server, which is the vast majority of the Domino installed base. There's no additional charge for clustering -- hasn't been since Domino R4.5.

  1. 19  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/2/2010 12:29:40 PM

    @17 You mentioned:

    "mobile and wireless access, cloud integration, and anti-spam/anti-malware"

    as areas where Exchange has built-in support. I'm not sure what "cloud integration" even means (that's not snide, I'm really not sure, cloud being one of those inevitably hyped buzz words that means a zillion different things depending on who you talk to), but Notes/Domino ships with anti-spam and anti-malware controls as well, and Lotus Traveler provides free mobile/wireless support, though you do have to install it separately. I'm not sure if that counts as "in the box" but it certainly doesn't require additional licensing or feature costs. Depending on the specifics of the implementations, one or the other of the products might be *better* at those things or provide support at different levels, of course.

  1. 20  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 3/2/2010 1:16:59 PM

    @17 - Those are all things bundled with Domino, too. The only thing Exchange 2007/10 might do better is antispam. Domino also includes entitlements to use Sametime, while Exchange does not. Microsoft charges you once for Communicator client CAL's and again for OCS licenses, much like they charge you for Exchange CAL's and again for Outlook -- unless you have a Software Assurance subscription.

    @18 - And you can cluster Domino across different server operating systems, including some free options. For example, Linux and iSeries or Windows and AIX, or any combination of those.

  1. 21  tom oneil http://www.codepress.net | 3/3/2010 8:05:14 AM

    @19 Can't you use Exchange directly with Google Apps (Cloud)? I know my Windows Mobile device talks to Google Apps through Exchange.

    That's one example I can think of.

  1. 22  Martijn de Jong http://www.socialsoftwareblog.nl | 3/3/2010 8:44:20 AM

    @10 You have to grant Bill that he has a good point (in his initial comments). We don't want to visit a customer who doesn't run any backups because he "uses a cluster and Ed Brill said a cluster replaces a backup". I dont think it's wise to convey such a message.

  1. 23  Erik Brooks  | 3/3/2010 9:28:30 AM

    @19 - What anti-spam controls are you talking about? DNS blacklisting and mail rules are the only native controls in Domino with which to attack spam.

    There's no DKIM support, no SPF, etc. There's also no way to prohibit SMTP mail spoofed as "oneOfYourUsers@yourdomain.com" from coming in if you have a Domino server routing mail to another Domino server prior to SMTP delivery to the general internet.

    In the ND8.0 forum awhile back there was a thread started about why IBM hasn't given any love to Domino SMTP (particularly with spam control). Somebody from IBM posted "we found that people generally use a non-Domino edge server for SMTP." And of course then a bunch of replies popped up saying "No, we use Domino for edge SMTP."

    Just a few small modern spam enhancements would go a long way. DKIM support, SPF, (inbound and outbound on both) and better incoming SMTP user authentication would be huge.

  1. 24  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/3/2010 9:57:56 AM

    @21 - It does? How odd. The traffic between your mobile device and Google's service has to pass through your Exchange server? I would expect your WM device to talk to Google Apps directly, the way my iPhone does. You're saying that your Exchange server acts as a proxy against Google Apps, right?

  1. 25  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/3/2010 10:15:47 AM

    @23 - So you agree with me, then. I said that one or the other might implement *better* support for certain things, and you're saying that Domino's anti-spam isn't very good. That's different than saying it doesn't exist unless you buy other products, which was the statement I disagreed with.

  1. 26  paul robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 3/4/2010 9:44:07 AM

    @17 I wasn't including clustering as an example. As I said before, MS is following Lotus' lead here, and is wise to do so.

    @19 "cloud integration" in the context of Exchange 2010 means being able to seamlessly interoperate between your on-premise implementation and MS' hosted service. For example, I can move mailboxes from my local Exchange server to BPOS, and back again; I can federate calendar sharing across organizations, manage multiple orgs from a single console, and so on.

    @21 Google uses "Exchange ActiveSync", which is just the MS name for its OTA sync protocol. It's not actually connecting to Exchange at any point.

    @23, @25 back in @12 I said that MS anti-spam/anti-virus is "handily ahead" of Lotus' offerings. I stand by that statement, and at least Erik agrees.

    Then there's unified messaging and IRM support... lots of other goodness to consider.

  1. 27  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/4/2010 12:43:57 PM

    @26 Thanks, Paul, that's exactly what I was curious about (re: cloud integration). That's a nice feature set.

    re: anti-spam/anti-virus, I was simply answering your "I'm not sure that's true for Domino..." statement in @17. I don't agree that Exchange is "handily ahead" of Domino in any area, but that might just be semantics on my part. The phrase "handily ahead" seems dismissive to me, and I think a vigorous debate can always take place about which product is better and by how much. In other words, there are areas where I would agree that Exchange does a better job than Domino, and there are areas where the reverse is true, but there aren't any areas where I think one is so much better than the other that there's no point in discussing the question. There is a lot of "goodness to consider" in both product suites. As Daniel said (@13), these are both mature (and I'd add robust) platforms.

    If we include 3rd-party integration, that's a different discussion, and in that area I do think MS is "handily ahead" of IBM.