You have a few options here.
The one we recommend, of course, is a full tape backup (frequently) of the Unity server including the Exchange information. Using a quality backup product such as BackupExec (which we’ve now tested and qualified) or ArcServ that have explicit Exchange support will certainly be your best disaster recovery method.
Unity 2.4.5 (build 73 and later) does support a simple failover configuration where you install that second box as another Unity server into the same site as the main box and setup greeting replication between them. Subscribers and call handlers created on the primary box are replicated to the other box automatically (power of a true unified messaging architecture) and when the first box goes down, the second box is ready to go. Some items such as the routing rules, switch configuration information and a few other things don’t replicate (since they’re not stored in the Exchange directory) so those would need to be manually configured on the 2nd box.
As an aside, I’m nearing completion on a tool to backup all Unity information on any 2.3.4 or later server and allow it to be restored to a clean install of a Unity 2.4.0 or later server. This may be of interest to folks since it’ll make “forklift” upgrades and/or moving between a stand alone and a unified install and the like considerably easier than it is now. In short the entire contents of the Unity directory including voice names, greetings, all handlers, interviewers, COS objects, locations etc… get stuffed into a big Access database which can be carted around and used to restore onto another Unity server. I still have a lot of testing to do with it so it wont be on my web site for a few weeks yet.
Regardless, the tape backup method really should be your first choice for such things…
Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect
Active Voice
jlindborg@activevoice.com
http://members.home.net/jlindborg
