Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: Tony Redmond's Guide to Successful Implementation

892 9.7 Deploying Local Continuous Replication (LCR)

age. It is faster and more convenient to bring back data online from a rep-

lica than to have to go through a complicated and long restore procedure.

9.7 Deploying Local Continuous Replication (LCR)

LCR is available for all editions of Exchange 2007 and provides a resiliency

option to protect against database failure caused by a disk outage that you

can deploy for small to medium servers at a low price point. You can deploy

LCR on any Exchange 2007 mailbox server except a cluster (CCR or SCC).

Unlike an SCC cluster, you can run the hub transport and Client Access

roles on a server that uses LCR. If you want to deploy a cluster to gain extra

resilience against server failure, then you have the option of deploying a

new CCR server on an MNS cluster or a traditional SCC configuration.

As with other Exchange 2007 servers, you can configure up to 50 stor-

age groups on a mailbox server that uses LCR. You can deploy a mixture of

storage groups, some that use LCR and some that do not. For example, you

might have a storage group configured to use circular logging because it

holds transient data and does not require the kind of protection offered by

LCR. Figure 9.3 shows a server that supports four storage groups. You can

see that the default storage group (First Storage Group) contains a public

folder database and has a copy status of “Disabled,” meaning that it does

not use LCR. The storage group at the top of the display also has a copy sta-

tus of “Disabled” although given its name (“Critical Mailboxes”), it is prob-

ably a good candidate to use LCR. The other two storage groups show their

copy status as “Healthy,” so you know that they use LCR. In passing, it is

worth noting that the storage groups and databases on this server do not

follow any naming convention. A server running LCR can become a com-

plex environment, especially with multiple storage groups when some oper-

ate LCR and some do not. It is in these situations that you see the true

value of a consistently applied naming convention.

Figure 9.3

A mixture of LCR

and “normal”

storage groups