Most traditional file-replication solutions require the installation of software on your primary Exchange servers. Bad idea. Here's why you should avoid installing extra software on your Exchange servers.

• Your average Exchange server is burdened enough as it is. Leave it alone.
• Just because you’ve decided to add some software to your Exchange server doesn’t mean Microsoft is going to feel obliged to support it. In fact, quite the contrary…it is not Microsoft’s policy to provide support for non-synchronous Exchange replication solutions for the simple reason that there’s no way to guarantee the results.
• Let’s say that you someday end up running into a little problem with your Exchange server and feel the need to call Microsoft Support. That’s when you’ll learn that you first need to yank all those other applications off your server before you can even request assistance.

Traditional

DR systems present you with yet another major hassle. At your recovery site you are required to faithfully replicate every last aspect of your primary Exchange environment. Which means that if you have five primary Exchange servers online, then you’ll also need to have five corresponding servers at your recovery site…and each of those will need to be configured exactly as its opposite number is…and they’ll each also have to be running an exact duplicate of system software, right down to the patch level. Can you spell “hassle”? And a very expensive and time-consuming one at that.

And here’s another thing…Say you want to test that traditional DR solution to make sure it actually works. The first thing you’re going to have to do is to bring down your primary Exchange system. Okay, so there goes your Sunday. But somebody forgot to tell the CEO, so your little test just blew up the broadcast message he was sending out to everyone in the company about that upcoming earnings announcement. Whoops…so there goes your job.

The good news, though, is that it doesn’t have to be like this. MailShadow® greatly simplifies matters in the following ways:

• First off, it puts NO software whatsoever on your primary Exchange servers, thus sparing you much grief.
• Secondly, MailShadow doesn’t require that you precisely replicate all of your Exchange hardware and software over at your recovery site. Heck, you can even choose to replicate a set of mailboxes selected from a number of Exchange servers to a single recovery server.
• And as for all that hassle and time involved in reproducing every last single software upgrade and patch—forget about it.
• Oh, and there’s one more thing…MailShadow is so easy and safe to use that there’s no need for end-user training. That’s because when a user’s mailbox ends up failing over to a MailShadow recovery server, he’ll simply be asked to restart Outlook and then he’ll be off and running again. There’s no special site for your users to go to, no unique login for them to try to remember, and no new interface for them to sort out. And, yes, that does indeed mean that there’s also no help desk for you to maintain. What will you do with all the time and money you save? We’re confident you’ll figure something out.