“…using/deploying a Teneros Exchange Failover appliance?
If so:
- What was the cost?
- Network bandwidth footprint?
- Ease of install / use?
- Reliability?” – asked by David Hsiao on LinkedIn
Answer…
Teneros provide an appliance that sits between your email server and the internet. If the connection to your email server is unavailable (because the link is down or the email server is kaput) it stores the incoming emails until the server can accept them.
I’ve had an associate implement one of these here in Australia. This was a big project for him and as he was the lead consultant on the project he was assuming a significant degree of professional risk. I’ll address your question one point at a time…
These appliances are expensive (at around $28,000 for the project).
Bandwidth requirements were not an issue and were on par with not having the solution in place.
Installation was easy (he says) and as an appliance was simple for the in-house IT guy to manage.
Reliability of the actual appliance was very good. It just did its thing quietly and waited for the problem that was likely not ever going to happen; loss of bulk emails.
Lessons Learnt?
Well, it was a lesson in architecture. If the appliance is on-site, what happens to queued emails if you loose the physical network connection to the site? In the example outlined above there is still a risk of loss of a large number of incoming emails & that is what happened when a backhoe ripped up the fiber in the street (that is going to cost them).
Where you really get a gain with this sort of appliance is when it is hosted offsite in a third-party data centre (you should add in the extra cost). In that circumstance the Teneros system receives the incoming emails and stores them awaiting the delivery to the in-house system. This can even be achieved via a very slow temporary backup link while the main link is repaired. i.e. it is better for most emails to be delivered overnight via a backup link than not at all.
Similar services are often offered by domain hosting registrars and other companies at significantly lower cost than the Teneros solution.
Mike Smith – dominoconsultant
