Exchange Backup

[karldenton]

Hi,

 

Bit of background.

 

Our Exchange server sits behind our firewall server (it also has an internal card)

 

The trouble is that the connection is via a virgin superhub 1 and it drops out every couple of week - a restart fixes it but it always seems to go down at weekend when staff need emails on there phone.

 

We have a backup mx setup - but that is if we swap the cable from the firewall server into a BT connection. The other backup mx is to another companies backup mx store.

 

Is there a way that when virgin goes down it can swap to a different connection -- I'm presuming either another network card in the exchange box or even another exchange server in a DAG?

 

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

Thanks

[dhicks]

The trouble is that the connection is via a virgin superhub 1 and it drops out every couple of week - a restart fixes it but it always seems to go down at weekend when staff need emails on there phone.

 

A restart of what - the Exchange server, or the Virgin hub? Can you automate either of those restarts - have something that monitors connectivity and runs whatever the restart process is if it senses a lack of connection for a certain length of time?

[karldenton]

Just a restart of the super hub.

[dhicks]

Just a restart of the super hub.

 

Can you automate restarting the Virgin Superhub? Does all connectivity - web access and so on - drop out when the Superhub has an issue? If so, you could have a script that runs on your Exchange server that monitors an external site (it could just ping Google every minute or so) and reboots the Superhub if it doesn't get a reply for, say, 5 consecutive tries. I'm guessing the Superhub has a web-based interface of some kind, so you'll probably need some kind of web-scraping tool or library to automate logging in to it and sending the "reboot" command.

[karldenton]

Just had a thought on this, is there a way to put a 2nd network card in the exchange server connected to a 2nd broadband so if the main MX record goes down it will go via the 2nd one but it goes to the same exchange box ?

 

Thanks

[cscc]

Not an ideal solution but you could plug the hub into one of these:

 

Electronic digital mains Timer Socket Plug-in with LCD Display 12/24 Hour 7 Days: Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools

 

Configure it to turn off for a few minutes each day and back on again.

 

Failing that some sort of PHP cURL script to login to the hub itself and restart it?