Hey Guys

I have a datacentre site and a disaster recovery site. I am designing a highly redundant Exchange 2010 solution for site resiliency. Both sites will have Client Access, Hub Transport and Mailbox Servers. If the datacentre site goes down and the Exchange infrastructure is failed over to the DR site, I want external incoming mail to be automatically redirected to the DR site with minimal loss of mail.

Can the Forefront Online Protection for Exchange offer this capability??? Would multiple MX Records be needed??? How can this be configured??? Would Forefront Online Protection for Exchange queue mails between the time that the datacentre site goes down to the point the disaster recovery site becomes available.

When you sign up for FOPE you actauly have to change your mx record to FOPE's address. Now on the Admin page of FOPE you will have the option to chose which IP addresses you want mail to flow to and you can have multiple addresses with a priority similar to how you would set up multiple mx records. I.E

1.1.1.1 10 (Primary Data Center SMTP server)

2.2.2.2 20 (Secondary Data Center SMTP Server)

FOPE will also que mail for up to 5 days.

• Proposed as answer by Nick Gu - MSFTMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, May 20, 2010 7:17 AM
• Marked as answer by Nick Gu - MSFTMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Friday, May 21, 2010 3:23 AM

When you sign up for FOPE you actauly have to change your mx record to FOPE's address. Now on the Admin page of FOPE you will have the option to chose which IP addresses you want mail to flow to and you can have multiple addresses with a priority similar to how you would set up multiple mx records. I.E

1.1.1.1 10 (Primary Data Center SMTP server)

2.2.2.2 20 (Secondary Data Center SMTP Server)

FOPE will also que mail for up to 5 days.

• Proposed as answer by Nick Gu - MSFTMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, May 20, 2010 7:17 AM
• Marked as answer by Nick Gu - MSFTMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Friday, May 21, 2010 3:23 AM

If primary datacentre is offline (ie, 1.1.1.1 10 is not responding/ not accessible) how FOPE will understand the problem and re-route the mail to 2.2.2.2. 20 . Is it checking SMTP port response from EDGE server ?

Hi,

you can configure mulitple hosts in FOPE with different priorities where the E-Mail will be sent to. FOPE first tries the host with the lowest priority and if this one fails it will try the next host.

Greetings

Christian