In my last post I explained the basic concepts of Exchange Server 2007 high availability.  In this post I will demonstrate one of the Exchange Server 2007 HA features that is called Local Continuous Replication.

What is Local Continuous Replication?

Local Continuous Replication (LCR) uses asynchronous log shipping technology to maintain a copy of a mailbox database on another locally connected disk volume.

For example, the mailbox database and transaction logs may reside on fast, expensive SAN disks, but the LCR copy is kept on slower, cheaper SATA disks.

LCR provides high availability for the Mailbox Server by protecting it from a storage failure.  If the SAN disks failed or became disconnected for some reason the server could continue serving end users via the replica database, possibly at a degraded performance level if the slower disks were not able to handle the required I/O load.

Because LCR is available in both Standard and Enterprise editions of Exchange Server 2007 it is a fairly easy way to achieve some high availability for the server. Continue reading Exchange Server 2007 High Availability Part 2 – Local Continuous Replication