Exchange Question

NightShade03

For those of you out there that manage exchange servers (or work with them), how difficult is it to setup/run/maintain? We have a small corporate office and a few branch offices (about 500 users total) but they use alot of email daily. The problem I have is that we outsource our exchange to a hoster and I have no real management control over the server. Trying to decide if I should just suck it up or put up the time to bring the exchange server in house....

dynamik

While odd things can always crop up, it's really not bad if you know what you're doing. It seems like that many users would justify bringing it in-house. What are you paying now, $10/user/month?

NightShade03

Yeah roughly in that neighborhood, however the hosting provider has exchange 2007 with BES for our handfull of blackberry users which might make it more expensive to bring in if I need a seperate BES server too ( I know nothing about BES just learning).

Who we use:

#1 Microsoft Hosted Exchange & Sharepoint Web Hosting | SherWeb

dynamik

I think you get gouged on those services. Isn't it another $20/month/user for those? BES is $3k for the software and $99/user with massive discounts as you increase that number: BlackBerry - BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange

NightShade03

I'm sorry does that say $28,000 for 500 users?!?!?!?! That's insane!!!

We only have about 20 BB users so the licensing costs wouldn't be too bad, but I'm more concerned with hardware costs to get exchange up and running. I know that exchange 2007 requires a 64 bit OS and I hear its a pretty heavy piece of software, so I'm guess a decent amount of RAM is needed.

dynamik

You should already know if you followed my links: http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/46056-mail-server-suggestion-needed.html

500 users is still fairly light as far as Exchange goes. You could get by with one decently spec'd server. Your costs are going to increase for HA though. You'd potentially want eight servers (two for each role assuming you're not using UM). Each role is made highly-available in different ways, so you can't just add an extra server and be done with it.

royal

Holy hell, 8 servers for HA for 500 users?

4 servers will suffice for your needs if you require HA across the board.

2 for CCR/SCC.

2 for HUB/CAS/UM. UM is made redundant on the IP Gateway side. HUB is automatically redundant due to the mailbox submission service round robin'ing between your HUB. Inbound SMTP can be made redundant by MX records. Application to HUB can be made redundant by NLB. CAS communication can be made redundant by NLB.

Or wait for Exchange 2010 and you can have full redundancy at the database level and have all roles on 2 Exchange 2010 servers. You'll still need ISA or a hardware load balancer to load balance your CAS stuff since there's a Windows limitation that prevents clustering services and Windows NLB to be installed on the same box and clustering is needed for DAGs.

NightShade03

500 users is very light in my opinion and I would just as soon setup a Postfix/Dovecot virtual setup with HA and be done with it but noooooo they like the calender in exchange go figure. Honestly I know that HA will become a huge issue when we cross that bridge and I don't want to bother spending tons of money on hardware for exchange HA (plus the software). I'm sure we'll end up with an Open Source setup at some point but until then we'll continue to be robbed every month by our hosting provider....

dynamik

Hey be fair, I did say potentially, and I was including ET in that. I was just speaking generally...

royal

dynamik wrote: »

Hey be fair, I did say potentially, and I was including ET in that. I was just speaking generally...

I know. I just wanted to pick on you. And I knew you'd reply so I was helping you by giving you a reason to make another post and be that much closer to the big 10K!

dynamik

Am I that transparent? Wait.. dammit..

Claymoore

NightShade03 wrote: »

I'm sorry does that say $28,000 for 500 users?!?!?!?! That's insane!!!

We only have about 20 BB users so the licensing costs wouldn't be too bad, but I'm more concerned with hardware costs to get exchange up and running. I know that exchange 2007 requires a 64 bit OS and I hear its a pretty heavy piece of software, so I'm guess a decent amount of RAM is needed.

$28,000? That's less than 6 months of hosting, and you own software that you can run for years. Now what price sounds insane?

As for 64 bit servers and OS, try to buy a 32 bit server today. Server 2008 R2 is 64 bit only and I can't think of the last time I bought a server that didn't have a 64 bit processor. There are processor, memory and storage sizing guides available with minimums and maximums for each server role. Exchange won't use more than 32 GB of RAM, but don't be surprised when the mailbox server eats all the RAM you try to feed it. HA is another issue - just don't build more than you really need.

/usr

On a serious, very realistic note...setting up Exchange is not that difficult.

Again, this is coming from a person who went from knowing nothing about Exchange to someone who went through all the pain of frustration to getting one up and running, hosting mail for around 75 users at multiple site and for multiple domain names.

If you're willing to put in the time to read a bit, getting one up and doing fairly basic mail hosting is not that hard.

On the other hand, I've recently ran into an issue with my Exchange Management Console where it errors out and I can't click on the Accounts tab of ANY user. A search of the net, an Experts Exchange post and two weeks of Microsoft's "email" support have gotten me nowhere. This is a production server.

Upside: Sure, it's pretty easy. You could do it.

Downside: Any issue on a production Exchange server, no matter how large or small, is HUGE. If you're not a full time Exchange admin (which most of us aren't), it just makes it a bit harder when trouble arises.

Hope that helped. If you have any more questions, feel free to PM me. I've been through it myself and can offer advice if needed.