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IT Support | Disaster Recovery & Google Message Continuity.

  

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- by David, "Don't Bring That Soda Into The Server Room", Quiram.

So you want to have your own Exchange server and host your own email. You are concerned about your Disaster Recovery plan. You want high availability for your email but can't afford the hardware and licensing to do so. Well, once again Google has come through for your needs! There is a Google service to fill in the gap for the high availability in case a disaster strikes your site or just your Exchange server. The service is called Google Message Continuity.

 As quoted from Google:

“Google Message Continuity, powered by Postini, is a cloud-based email continuity solution for organizations running Microsoft Exchange email servers. By providing Gmail as an alternate, synchronized email system, Google Message Continuity increases email availability for your organization and helps users stay productive in the event of a disaster or outage of the Exchange server. By extending the reliability,security, and functionality of Google’s services to Exchange, Google Message Continuity allows you to:

• Develop a complete email continuity and disaster recovery solution for your organization

• Maintain constant email access for users round the clock, even if your Exchange server is not available 

• Minimize the risk of data loss due to on-premise server failures 

• Protect your email from spam, viruses, phishing, and other email-borne threats with built-in message security features”

So that all sounds good, so let’s dig into some details.

Google Message Continuity requires the following Microsoft components:

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, 2007, or 2010 as the primary mail server. Either Standard or Enterprise editions.

• Each Windows client machine where you plan to install and run the Continuity Sync Server must have this minimum configuration:
  • Microsoft Windows: Windows XP SP3, Windows Server 2003 or Windows 7.
  • Microsoft Outlook 2003 with SP3 or later.

• It is recommended that you use the latest patches for both Microsoft Windows and Outlook.

• The Continuity Sync Server must be installed on a computer with a minimum disk space of 10MB per user and a minimum overall disk space of 5GB total.

• Do not install the Continuity Sync Server on the same machine that is running your Exchange Server.

You will also have to have the Postini service as well from Google or get it as part of the bundle.

 All the requirements seem to be pretty reasonable. From my own experiences, most of the Exchange servers I see out in the wild all meet these requirements. And if you are running anything 2000, well...it is time to upgrade. The cost of the upgrade will be well invested even if there isn't a call to use this service. 

The service is managed through a web interface and there are customizable alerts. During the outage which the service is utilized there is 25 Gb work of email storage per account available. Once your Exchange server is back up, the emails will sync from Google Message Continuity back to your server. Those of you who have used the Google Postini service have experienced this during a spooling event due to loss of server or connectivity to your site.

It isn't just your email that syncs up, you can sync up your calendar and contacts as well. The client that is installed on the desktop will keep the Outlook details sync'd up with the Gmail account used for failover.

Once your Exchange service is interrupted, the Gmail accounts will be accessible for the users. There is even a mobile connectivity available as well for those out on the road! 

The cost for this is very reasonable. You can provide the Postini filtering service and Message Continuity servicer for under $1000 for the average medium sized business.

So how does it work?

When you are using the Postini email filtering service, the email is routed through the Postini servers. Once the email is filtered, it is sent on to your Exchange server. The Message Continuity service replicates the email that is filtered and stored on a Google Sync Server to be available when the service is activated.

Google provides a great diagram:

As you can see, the flow of mail is replicated over to the Google Sync Server during the mail flow and the syncing between servers happens along this mail floe. The client side contacts and calendar evens sync up through the client that is installed on the workstation or laptop. 

For those already using the Google Postini service, this will add very little cost per user and have access to high availability email services. For those looking at the Google Message Continuity as a Disaster Recovery tool, you get the added benefit of an excellent mail filtering service. Both are Win-Win scenarios.

I think this is such a good disaster recovery tool for the small and medium sized businesses. It easy for someone with IT experience to set up and maintain. The email syncing with a Gmail account is such a natural step for the Postini service and is based on working technology. Having your email available to the users WHEN the disaster happens and DURING the disaster is awesome. One of the highest priorities in Disaster Recovery plans is communications. By leveraging the Google Message Continuity service you already have one of your recovery priorities secured even before you fully know the extent of the disaster!!! The affordability of the service brings it to the small and medium business allowing them to be more competitive and resilient in today's trouble markets. If you'd like to know more about Google Apps, be sure to talk to our friends over at Mosaic. We'd be more than welcome to help set-up your hosted Exchange services here at Trigon.