Microsoft Server 2012 & Hyper-V Replica | AMKA
A functional Disaster Recovery strategy for AMKA’s messaging platform
Client Understanding
With over 1000 employees in the manufacturing and marketing space throughout Africa, AMKA listed the requirements in the establishment of a functional Disaster Recovery solution for their messaging platform. Due to the nature of the product installed, Microsoft Exchange 2003, the then-in-place strategy was based on a full rebuild and restore through backup media in a recovery situation. Actual time to recover flagged an urgent need to provide a more efficient and resilient process that would ensure as little human intervention as possible in the restoration task.
Roadmap Approach
Understanding the technology available in the industry, AVeS were able to recommend a continuous replicated solution that was both platform and application autonomous. This native replication would be built off of the latest server-based technology namely Microsoft Server 2012 with Hyper-V Replica.
Solution
With a full understanding of the requirements, a new server infrastructure was procured and loaded with Hyper-V Server 2012 to avoid unnecessary license costs for the Disaster Recovery platform which would host the Exchange replica. By utilising System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, the Exchange Server was virtualised and housed into this platform, the original hardware was redeployed to Windows Server 2012 and the Hyper-V role was added. A Hyper-V replica was configured for the Exchange virtual machine and the failover server was transported to the secondary site. This provided the organisation a fully replicated platform that held 4 states of the messaging organisation, as well as ensured that in the event of a failure could easily be revived with little recovery time and data loss.
Final Outcomes
“Simplicity and cost efficiency were essentially the client requirements that were highlighted through our technical experts. Through their experience and using the AVeS values of utilizing existing technology that may already be present in the organization enabled us to manage the client’s expectations” – explains Charl Ueckermann, Managing Director at AVeS.
About AVeS
AVeS combines expert knowledge and services with leading technologies to provide comprehensive information security and infrastructure solutions. Working off 15-years of migration strategies, as well as effective designing of various platforms, we pride ourselves in offering an out-of-the-box approach to many tricky situations in which companies find themselves. We create a multi-phase approach to the technologies, we streamline business spend and ensure compliancy with regard to IT infrastructure.