Disaster Planning - Exchange and ISP Wworking Together For Business Continuity

With email being such a significant part of most business peoples day having a backup plan in place should something happen to your mail server is time well spent.

A customer named Harold I was recently working with on his CudaMail filtering setup was explaining to me a very interesting way to do a form of Disaster Planning for Exchange Server, specifically the version included in Small Business Server (SBS).

While this method doesn't help Exchange be more robust it does keep the company working should there be a problem with the Exchange server and gives Harold time to work on his server without significant e-mail down time.

What he does is have his e-mail hosted at an ISP and uses the POP3 connector in Exchange to pull off the e-mail on a regular basis. Now this is not new as the POP3 connector has been available since SBS 2003 as far as I know but his setup is unique.

While most people would use the POP3 connector as a temporary solution when migrating to the Exchange SMTP service, Harold is leaving it in place and looking for a replacement with additional features.

(any experience with good and or free replacements?)

Should his Exchange server go "belly up" then the ISP’s mail servers would continue to accept and deliver e-mail to the mailboxes they have on their mail server.

This is where Harold’s advanced planning comes into play. He has made sure that the users know that they can use the webmail feature from the ISP to check on and reply to messages while the Exchange server is off-line. This keeps the Company alive and working and gives Harold time to do his repairs or restore from backup.

There are some pro’s and con’s to this setup that I think need to be addressed.

1. Delay in getting e-mail. Because the POP3 Connector does a scheduled check of the ISP mailbox there will be a delay of up to 15 minutes in getting e-mail. The response goes out from Exchange immediately but in this age of "instant everything" people want e-mail to be instant too. The average delay is going to be 7 ½ minutes so this is not a big issue unless there is a deadline your trying to meet.
   
   
2. History. As far as I know the POP3 connector does not have the setting to leave x number of day’s worth of messages in the mailbox so the end users will have to use both the local copy of e-mail on their desktop and also remember to BCC themselves on any sent e-mail so they can maintain an accurate history of what is said via e-mail.
   
   
3. Encryption. The POP3 connector in Exchange cannot encrypt the messages being pulled down via POP3. This is why Harold is looking for a better POP3 connector. Does anyone have any experience, good or bad, with the third party POP3 connectors?
   
   
4. Passwords. The users need to keep track of the passwords used for e-mail at the ISP. How good are your users at remembering passwords?
   
   
5. Training and reminders. The old adage ‘use it or lose it’ comes to mind. Will the users remember how to use the Webmail in a time of crisis? With e-mail down how will you be able to remind them they have this option?
   
   
6. What happens to his e-mail if the ISP has a problem? How can he modify his setup to get the best of both worlds?
   

Can you think of any other issues or gotcha’s with this setup? Would an IMAP connector be a better option? Is there such a beast for Exchange?

- Shaun