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Setting Up a Secondary Site

Topic Last Modified: 2009-03-03

Setting up a secondary site requires deployment of appropriate hardware, deployment of software at the secondary site, and other preparations and ongoing maintenance of the site. If your backup and restoration strategy specifies the use of a secondary site to support recovery, use the procedures and guidelines in this section to complete the following steps:

  1. Preparing the secondary site.
  2. Maintaining the secondary site.

Preparing the Secondary Site

Setting up the secondary site requires first doing the following:

  1. Setting up the infrastructure. This includes verifying the setup and configuration of Active Directory Domain Services, DNS, certificates, load balancers, networks, routing, and other infrastructure components, as specified in your deployment plan.
  2. Installing and configuring the required server platforms at the secondary site. For details, see the “Building Standby Servers” section in Setting Up Server Platforms.

Note

The backup and restoration of all of Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is beyond the scope of this document. These steps assume that Active Directory Domain Services is set up with the appropriate configuration to support the secondary site in the same domain as the primary site and that Active Directory Domain Services remains available and functional, in the event of the loss of the primary site.

After the infrastructure is in place and the standby server platforms are installed and configured, prepare them for use by doing the following:

  1. On the server that will provide the back-end database for the secondary site, install a new SQL Server database.
  2. Create a new Enterprise pool (for example, backuppool.boston.corp.contoso.com) and associate it with the new SQL Server instance. Do not select the option to replace existing databases.
  3. Set up the Front End Servers at the secondary site, and then join them to the new Enterprise pool.
  4. Set up the other servers required at the secondary site by configuring them to use the new pool.
  5. Verify that the backup location is available to the servers at the secondary site.

To help ensure that the secondary site is prepared to be brought online in the event of a failure of the primary site, you should set up the secondary site as soon as possible after you deploy the primary site.

Ensure that the backups are routinely stored at a location that the servers at the secondary site can access. To facilitate faster restoration of service in the event of a failure, copy all backups to the secondary site at the time they are done. It is generally recommended that all backups be routinely copied to the secondary site to ensure availability in the event of failure.

Maintaining the Secondary Site

On an ongoing basis, verify that each standby server is ready to be put into service, which requires the following:

  • Evaluating the topology and components of the secondary site to determine whether they continue to be appropriate to the business needs. As business directions and usage change, the level of support that is appropriate for the secondary site may require changes to the topology and components of the secondary site.
  • Verifying that the infrastructure is ready. This includes verifying the setup and functionality of Active Directory Domain Services, DNS, certificates, load balancers, routing, and other infrastructure components.
  • Reviewing the most recent deployment plan of the primary site, including all configuration settings for all servers that are deployed at the secondary site. Ensure that the deployment plan matches the actual deployment at the primary site, including installation of all service packs and software updates. This plan should provide information about the setup of each primary site server, including the deployment prerequisites, installation and configuration of the operating system, installation and configuration of Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and installation and configuration of any additional software (such as reverse proxy server software).
  • Reviewing the deployment plan of the secondary site and ensuring that it is current and matches both the most recent deployment plan of the primary site and the actual setup of the servers at the secondary site (including installation of all service packs and software updates). This includes verifying that all software is installed, as appropriate, on each standby server, including the operating system, Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and any additional software required (such as SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2005 with SP2).
  • Keep servers running so they will be ready to be put into service, in the event of lost service at the primary site.

Note

In addition to routine maintenance, as described in this topic, you should also test the secondary site. For details, see Validating Pool, Server, and Site Backups.