Introduction

SPAMfighter Exchange Module (SEM) has built-in support for Windows Clustering - through the use of the SPAMfighter Clustering technology.

SPAMfighter Exchange Module Clustering provides you with full fail-over capability and thus provides you with continuous spam and virus protection in case of system failure or maintenance.

As in the case with everything else in SPAMfighter, enabling and administering SPAMfighter Clustering is extremely easy - with as much as possible being fully automated.

The installation automatically detects that the Windows operating system is part of a cluster - and tries to detect and configure SEM automatically to work in the existing Windows Cluster.

In contrast to most other Cluster capable programs - SPAMfighter Exchange Module has built-in automatic update procedures across all nodes - if you wish it to do so. This means that no update maintenance is required for SPAMfighter - with no cluster failover procedure needed to be initiated just to install the latest updates.

How it works

SPAMfighter Exchange Module Clustering works by integrating itself into the same Cluster Group that the Exchange Server is using.

The installation process in SEM automatically detects the Windows Cluster and Exchange Cluster, and will try to automatically configure the SEM installation to work in the existing cluster.

The integration process is done in 2 easy steps:

       - First a basic installation and configuration of SEM is done on every node in the Cluster

       - Next the SEM is integrated into the Windows Cluster

Whenever possible all the procedures are fully automated - with the user in full control of which and when the procedures are initiated. A typical integration process only requires 1 mouse click.

Technical details

The technical integration procedure are done through the use of a Shared Disk - a technology which is provided by the Windows Clustering Service and almost certainly already exists in the cluster.

A new Cluster Resource named "SPAMfighter Cluster Instance" is automatically created in the same Cluster Group as the Exchange cluster resources and made dependent on the Exchange cluster resources. In addition to this, a new folder named "SPAMfighter" is created on the shared disk - where the internal SEM database and other shared resources are stored.

Screendump taken from an Exchange 2003 active/passive cluster

In case of a cluster failover, the SPAMfighter service will be gracefully stopped on the failing node - and started on the second node without the need for any user intervention. All configuration done on the one node will automatically be distributed to the other nodes in the cluster.

In case of a SPAMfighter failure - the cluster will try to restart the SPAMfighter service - but in order to ensure the overall state of the Windows Cluster, no Cluster Failover will be automatically initiated.