Virtual mail appliance clustering

Question

Hello, 
 We have cloned one virtual mail appliance and created a second mail appliance with different hostname and IP configuration. Now, we want to enable clustering on the second mail appliance. 
 There are few things that I needed to clarify before doing this: 
 1. Do I need a separate license for the second Mail Appliance or is this fine since this is a Clone? 
 2. After enabling the cluster, if one the two appliances fails, do I need to make changes manually or will the other appliance take over and everything will function as normal? 
 3. Do I need a separate mail appliance manager to manager the two appliances? 
 4. Do I need to make any changes on the Exchange CAS server after enabling the Mail Appliance Clustering? 
 
 Thank you.

Red_Warrior · Accepted Answer

Hi Burim, 
 
 You will not need a separate license to cluster a member, however it is not recommended to clone your existing appliance. IE you will not want a duplicate database and such. For best results, download the VM files and deploy a new appliance. When asked use your activation key.. complete and upgrade the appliance. Once it is fully up to date and running, join it to your existing appliance and it will consume its configuration. 
 * note: if your activation key is from a hardware appliance you will need to get a vm key from support as they are different. This is included in your license. 
 
 Clustering offers no redundancy and mail must be directed to each appliance. Ie multiple A records / send / receive connectors or other method of directing mail to the applaince. In the event an appliance fails simply deploy a new VM as above or restore a backup. (note backups should be done when the appliance is powered down) 
 the other option is to simply deploy and run a backup appliance and don't direct mail to it. In the event the primary mail appliance fails, just change the firewall rule to point to the backup appliance. 
 No additional appliances are required to cluster, the only requirement is bidirectional and unfettered access between the two. See here 
 http://esa.sophos.com/docs/esa/webhelp/index.html#sea/concepts/PortConfig.html 
 
 In exchange terms you will need to create the apporiate send and receive connectors depending on how you wish to direct mail.. for example if your adding an appliance for outbound only, then you would need a send connector from the appropriate exchange server. Or if its an inbound appliance, add it to the existing anonymous recieve connectors. Other then connectors the cluster will be transparent to any other infrastructure.