Exchange 2010

[magnus911]

Whoa! First post in this forum. Awesome.

Anyway, need help! I have a client who just called (~25 users). He wants to install a Microsoft Exchange Server before year end. They have been using Hosted Exchange through FrontBridge (Now Microsoft) for the past year but want to bring the Exchange in-house, mostly for speed but also for BES support. They currently have 3 physical servers all running Windows 2003 Server R2:

Server 1 - A/D and File and Print Services
Server 2 - LOB Application (SQL)
Server 3 - Terminal Server

Would you recommend going with Exchange 2010? From an admin perspective, how different is it from the 2007 version? I am downloading the trial now. From what I have read, BES will work with Exchange 2010. I'm thinking it might be a good time to virtualise this stuff but it is currently running very well, other than the slow e-mail. I'm a believer of, "if it ain't broke, dont fix it" but this guy is feeling flush and wants to decimate some currency.

[grestone]

I would purchase bes support from Microsoft, keep hosted exchange and spend the money upgrading the rest of the infrastructure to 2008, particularily the terminal server.
And Exchange 2010 would require Windows Server 2008 64 bit.

[magnus911]

Can't it run on 2003 64-bit? or does it have to be 2008?

[grestone]

No. It needs to be 2008 or 2008 R2

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/ ... ments.aspx

[magnus911]

AFAIK, Microsoft only offers BES support in some type of special pilot program (Beta). It is not offered to the general public. If you have different information, I would love to hear it. I even called them on the phone about a week ago after finding documents on the web that they do support BES. I know I can move them to another provider that does support BES, but performance has been an issue as well as the lack of single sign-on.

They are not having any problems or performance issues with their existing terminal server. Even remote printing has been working fine for them.

[magnus911]

This would be a new piece of hardware if we are going to do it. It seems like overkill to add a 4th server to the mix for a 25 user company. However, each of the other servers has a particular function and cannot be shared with Exchange. I thought about replacing their existing A/D server with SBS 2008 but I am not sure this is the best option. Virtualization might make the most amount of sense here. The customer has Open Licenses on all of their existing servers so they can be virtualized on new hardware. I'm still not sure what the best option is as of yet.

[grestone]

Virtualization would be a really good solution, since you're getting a bit of server sprawl already, but it'll be costly, as you'll need some kind of shared storage (SAN), and you're going to have to uprade some of the existing servers (more CPU/RAM) or replace them for 1 or 2 big virtualization hosts.
Cost-wise it would be easier to just add 2008 server for Exchange. SBS is not an option, since it does not use Exchange 2010 and probably won't.

[boris]

If you don't want live migration then a SAN isn't necessary. You can use DAS.