Two Active Mirror's, Diff Locations?

[nharvey1]

Good Morning Everyone!

 

Just found the site, I hope to call this one my new home!

 

Here's the situation:

 

I have 6 offices I need to network together, for purpose of ease, we'll label them

1,2,3,4,5,6 lol

 

1 is the main server we have now,

and 1-3 is in the Southern US,

while 4-6 is in the Northern US.

 

Instead of making all the traffic go to #1, is there a way I can make a mirror server at #4,

and have 4-6 grab (files, email, data) off there, while 1-3 use #1?

 

Applications:

Exchange

Sharepoint

ACT!

(and tons of random files)

 

Thanks in advance!

[ICTCity]

Hi,

 

The easiest way to do what you want is to use ROUND ROBIN with DNS. The problem is that this method is not actually a real load balancing, it just sends one time to HOST1 and another time to HOST2.

 

The best way to load balancing the load, is to use what the applications offer:

exchange:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff625247.aspx

 

SharePoint:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCgQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2Fc%2Fe%2F9%2Fce9623cf-fb93-4094-874c-476c46a20b71%2Fwssipo3N.doc&rct=j&q=microsoft%20sharepoint%20load%20balancer&ei=KcQJTvGeIMqAOsbWhJUB&usg=AFQjCNE5gSHqOVjEfw5OgPouIXStCo6Phg&cad=rja

 

I don't know what is ACT!

 

Let me know if you need more help.

[nharvey1]

My budget is set at $100k, so we'd deff want the BEST way, for reliability purposes.. I want to aim for 0% downtime.

[ICTCity]

First, forget about 0%, it is almost impossible for many reasons. You can afford to reach the 99,999%.

 

So, you could start by telling me what you have (hardware) and what is your configuration (network, storage).

 

Thanks.

[nharvey1]

Nothing yet.

 

Users: 1 & 4 have about 30 users at each location.. the others have about 10 user...

 

I want to do this the right way, not just a way- you know?

We have a 10mb up & down coming in, but that's the only thing we have on paper.

[ICTCity]

First, read this topic http://serverforum.org/topic/1414-setting-up-a-iismysqlexchange-server/page__pid__3495

 

Just to have an idea.

 

So, if you have a total of 80 users (6 offices, one with 30 and five with 10), and you users don't use e-mails to send attachment of mega and mega, you should be able to install 2 exchange servers with CDR (continuous data replication), or at least, a scheduled replication (every hour).

 

Now, the point is the hardware. You could move on a Virtual Environment with XenServer or ESX, both have HA & Live Migration. If you want to accomplish this, you must use shared storage. Here comes the second question: what kind of storage? Everything depends on how many space do you need. There are many solutions you can implement, from my experience, NetApp does the job... but it is REALLY expensive! You can think about HP or IBM which have both good solutions and cost a bit less.

 

Start by thinking if you want shared or local storage.