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Exchange 2010: blessing or curse?
Microsoft's newest messaging server brings benefits with care and attention
By John Fontana | Network World US
Published: 15:15 GMT, 09 October 09
Those eyeing a migration to Exchange 2010 will find lots of options that improve the platform, but they won't come without careful attention to deployment details including the rollout of Windows Server 2008, says one expert.
Exchange 2010, which was released to manufacturing recently, includes new storage and deployment options, enhanced inbox management capabilities, built in email archiving, new database clustering, and additional hardware options. And while it all is designed to add up to a better Exchange, it doesn't eliminate the complexity of deploying the messaging server, says Lee Dumas, the director of architecture for Azaleos, a provider of remote management services for Exchange and SharePoint.
To get all that, the effort begins before Exchange is even out of the box given that the software requires Windows Server 2008.
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"There are a lot of things that make up what is Windows 2008, so it will be important to have a good plan to roll that out," says Dumas, one of less than 100 Microsoft Certified Architects and a former member of Microsoft's Exchange development team. "It is important to have a good server image before you go out and start building your messaging server on top of that."
And Exchange brings its own set of challenges. "I'm not slamming Exchange, but to achieve the level of SLAs, and dealing with large amounts of data, multiple copies of databases, server roles, and load balancing makes complexity inherent in getting the whole system in place," he said.
The rewards, however, will follow for those that heed due diligence, he says.
One of the marquee features for IT is the new Database Availability Groups (DAG). "It's a cleaner strategy for clustering locally and for disaster recovery. You can go deeper with more copies of the database itself and you're not limited to two copies like you were with CCR [cluster continuous replication] technology," he says. In addition, users won't need to use additional features to take database replications off site.
Dumas says another important improvement is support for up to 16 databases in a DAG. "What that does is allows administrators to have local copies in the same data centre, as well as a second or even third data centre that has up to date copies of Exchange," he said.
Microsoft also has tweaked replication to make loads more evenly distributed using a new feature called MAPI on the Middle Tier (MOMT), which cuts failover times dramatically, including sub 60 second response time.
"Previously users could only achieve these kinds of failover times with third party technology," Dumas says.
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