Fault tolerance is a system's ability to continue functioning when part of the system fails. A fault tolerant server organisation is one that has taken preventative measures in minimising the possibility of a disaster occurring, as well as minimising the impact of a disaster should it occur anyway.

It is crucial that your Exchange 2000 organisation is fault tolerant. You must ensure that all Exchange configurations, mailboxes, public folder data, and work in progress are secure in case your Exchange 2000 organisation experiences problems.

The following contains the following topics regarding fault tolerance within Exchange 2000:

• Transaction log files and database files
• Server portioning best practices
• Domain controller availability
• Exchange 2000 Server clusters
• RAID configurations
• Minimising single points of failure
• Server security
• Disk defragmentation
• Hard disk space considerations

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Premium Edition
• Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Standard Edition
• Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server