THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF THE THREAD POSTED HERE
Ok, we had a lot of meetings about the use of a KEMP and DAG's for resiliency. I am now being told that it was either a DAG we would implement or a KEMP load balancer. The KEMP load balancer was said to do full resiliency. My understanding is that the KEMP will not do support the mailbox server role, so if a server goes down and if a users mailbox was in a database on that server, they can't use email.
When I was first told about implementing failover redundancy I was pointed to the KEMP with a DAG and following this article as a guide. As the title states it's for Client Access Servers. I was new to DAGs at this point, never heard of them. But knew it was the only way to have complete resiliency. I was sent off with other blogs such as this one. How can this blog even say it's redundant, when it's neglecting the mailbox server role -- it can't.
I knew I needed Windows Server 2008 Enterprise to implement a DAG, and I pointed proof to it in some books. But then I found articles that the KEMP load balancer could provide the services that were required from the server 2008 enterprise clustering. So I thought it would be possible, to implement a DAG using the load balancer. My new understanding was incorrect and my original understanding was true.
Can anyone provide me with some options for resiliency for the mailbox role?
I currently have 2 servers with all roles. I am thinking I can use a dedicated machine with ISCSI targets and have one, of those two exchange servers, with the mailbox server role installed to have access to those drives. This will allow for the data to be stored on a different server and possibly in a different location. However, it wont work because if the mailbox server goes down, the other server wont be able to access the mailbox database, as it would access it through the failed server. I would also utilize the KEMP load balancer to provide CAS redundancy.
So again, how might I be able to make this work with 2 exchange servers that utilize Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard.