Double-Take

[mattwray]

Anyone using this currently? Real world pros and cons?

We are desgining our DR solution and I am strongly thinking about using the Double-Take software. From reading about it, it seems very robust and could work well. We would be deploying it across a WAN with the updates to go during the evening.

Any input, thoughts or advice are all welcome.

[VonZipper]

We use it, but the servers sit next to each other. It works wonderfully, but I do not think I would put it across a WAN, well, not unless you were very comfortable that it would never go down, because as soon as it does, Number takes over!

[eazeaz]

Double Take

Since shoretel Director uses a lot of IP addresses for switch to server configs and not DNS names, when the failover actually took place, the IP address of the server would change (remote site). I believe this would break the connections between director and ALL the switches, etc.

Clients would redirect (eventually when DNS cache timed out) since the PCM uses DNS.

I would think that you would have to go into the director and change the IP address of the Vmail server, etc. While not a big deal, it would make failover a "manual" process instead of an automated one. It would also make the vmail server "move" into a different Shoretel site. However, it would still show that it is in the First/HQ site. We tested this by moving our server from the main site to a remote site and changing the IP address. All was well.

I have no idea what would happen if you have Distributed Vmail servers, but i suspect it wouldn't be good.... since they would be looking for each other.

We are considering the same thing for DR purposes. Atleast we would just be looking at an ip address change, instead of a reinstall, restore from tape, and then IP address changes.

I have heard in a future release that the Director functions and TAPI will be available from any of the vmail servers. Once this happens, DR/doubletake would be useless. It may be better to take a few acronis images and just wait it out. Once distributed director and TAPI are available DR scenarious would be a walk in the park.

[Kevin]

DoubleTake across the WAN

I have never used DoubleTake, but I have looked at how to use it with ShoreTel servers before. I believe both servers need to be in the same broadcast domain. When I looked at this previously IIRC you need to bridge the network across the WAN using a VLAN and a dot1q tunnel.

-Kevin