E-Mail Without ClusteringE-Mail Without Clustering

E-mail administrators looking for better system availability from Microsoft Exchange without the complexity of clustering get relief on Monday with the release of NEC Solutions America's high-availability Exchange package.

In addressing the need for uninterrupted operation of company E-mail systems, NEC found that many E-mail administrators had been misdiagnosing system problems, says Mike Mitsch, senior director of marketing for NEC's server-solutions unit. Mitsch says that while administrators typically list operating system or application failures as the No. 1 reason for E-mail system outages, ahead of hardware failure, NEC's user-group studies indicated that when operating system and application failures are closely investigated, they're often found to be caused by subtle hardware problems. NEC blames those subtle problems on device drivers that aren't tested rigorously enough to ensure maximum availability.

The most frequent methods of dealing with such problems are to deploy a standby server to act as a failover option, or to resort to clustering, a complex undertaking that requires the purchase of additional software licenses. NEC's answer: Create hardware redundancy within the server box by running twin processors and input/output systems simultaneously, ensuring that the E-mail system keeps running even if a hardware failure occurs. The system can then identify that problem, solve it in the background, then reboot the hardware components that failed and sync them back up with the redundant components that kept the system running.

The result, Mitsch says, is less downtime combined with a reduced administrative workload. "If you're going to cluster, you're adding complexity to the situation, and if you add complexity, you're going to have more failures." NEC also provides comprehensive support for both its server hardware and the Exchange software.

Mitsch says the NEC approach also will save E-mail administrators money. A packaged offering for 500 users--including NEC high-availability server hardware, Exchange software licenses, and three years of support--runs about $98,000.