SteelEye LifeKeeper protects applications and Servers in one of three ways. Below we have used MS Exchange as an example.

1. Failover in a data mirrored environment

• Data is mirrored from a local disk located on an active server to a local disk located on a backup server.
• With the data being available on both servers, LifeKeeper monitors application and system resources and services and initiates a recovery action in the case of a failure.
• In the event of a failure, LifeKeeper will automatically attempt to restart services on the same server. If services cannot be restarted, LifeKeeper will automatically restart the services on the backup server in the cluster.
• When control switches to the backup server, it will have the data and the Exchange application ready to startup.
• The total downtime is typically a few minutes, the majority of which is taken up by the startup of Exchange.

2. Failover in a shared storage environment

• The clustering capabilities of LifeKeeper for Exchange monitors the Exchange Server system resources and services. Once a failure is detected a sequence of events is initiated that results in the backup server restarting Exchange. In this case, the Exchange database will be shared between the two servers via the shared storage.
• Users will be unaware that they are running from a separate server and will be back online in a matter of minutes.

3. Failover across a Wide Area Network

• LifeKeeper asynchronously and reliably replicates data over a WAN to ensure data availability on the remote site while monitoring Exchange Server resources.
• In the event of a disaster, it activates the backup copy and starts up the remote Exchange server on the remote site.
• SteelEye LifeKeeper’s data replication, clustering and disaster recovery capabilities are fully integrated with applications, and can work individually, or in concert, to provide local-area network data replication and local shared storage high availability, as well as disaster recovery across a wide area network.
• In the event of a failure, SteelEye LifeKeeper will automatically attempt to restart services on the same server. If services cannot be restarted, LifeKeeper will automatically restart services on the designated server in the cluster.