Exchange server costings

[localzuk]

I've been asked to get some idea of how much it would cost us to move our email hosting inhouse, due to various issues we've been having with our current provider (LEA).

 

So, could someone give me an idea of how much it would cost me to do the following:

 

Buy a HP server with enough grunt to run Exchange for 4 years, with 120 mailboxes and OWA.

 

A rough idea how much the licensing would be for the above under Schools Agreement.

 

I'm figuring something around £3k or so for the server, and something like £500 for the licensing per year, plus the cost of a backup agent license for BackupExec.

[zag]

Sounds a lot for the server, exchange does not use many resources at all. It just eats as much ram as you give it.

 

I run 1200 mailboxes on exchange 2003 fine with 2gb of ram and a P4 cpu.

[localzuk]

Sounds a lot for the server, exchange does not use many resources at all. It just eats as much ram as you give it.

 

I run 1200 mailboxes on exchange 2003 fine with 2gb of ram and a P4 cpu.

 

We use HP servers, so I was looking at a DL360 G5 with 1 or 2 Quad core Xeon 2.83Ghz processors and 4 5HDD's (2 for OS, 3 for RAID 5 for data). That'd come to something around £3k or so. Not to mention that, by the time we do it (if we do it) we'd be looking at Exchange 2010, which is 64bit only, minimum of 4GB RAM. So i'd be looking at 8GB RAM.

[Domino]

Also need to factor in anti-spam, exchange-centric AV, certificates, etc.

 

The resource allocation you want to give it depends on your traffic volume - and also if you're used to a hosted webmail you'll find that will increase exponentially once staff (and yourself) see the kind of things that you can do when you have total control over the system.

 

Sorry can't be more helpful about pricing - never had a schools agreement

[Firefox]

Do you have any back-end storage available? SAN?

 

If you did you could simply buy a decent spec box and create a couple of virtual servers. We are running a couple of virtual exchange servers at the moment (as well as 6 physical) and seem to have no issue.

 

It would then allow you for potential future growth. The price on a Dell R710 with 24 GB of RAM for example is pretty good. Would assume being a school you'd get a good discount on website price too.

 

obviously you would have to possibly look into ESX licensing if you went down this road.

[Willott]

On licensing front, if you're looking at Exchange standard edition and just for staff... your staff CALs will be covered by your desktop CALs, and the exchange server itself is then less than £100 on Schools agreement (have recently added it to ours). Server spec wise, I've gone for a single quad core, 4GB RAM, 3x 146GB (Mailstore) SAS and 2x 72GB (OS and Transaction Logs) SAS, and cost is ~£2.1k for server. Only other licensing cost for us is Backup Exec. I'm looking at this supporting our 70ish staff (maybe more) for the forseeable future. There's a very useful tool for working out requirements for Exch2007 (I think it's an HP tool), if I can find it, I'll let you know.

 

Edit: Tool found for 2010 - http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/us/en/sizers/microsoft-exchange-server-2010.html - should give a good idea, but may overspec it (they tend to deal with significant user number/high traffic/high load email systems).

Edited January 26, 2010 by Willott

[localzuk]

Thanks for the details all.

 

Picking up on Domino's points. Can anyone recommend:

 

* Anti-Spam

* Exchange AV?

[glennda]

Thanks for the details all.

 

Picking up on Domino's points. Can anyone recommend:

 

* Anti-Spam

* Exchange AV?

 

what anti-virus do you use atm? if you are using sophos i know they do a AV/anti spam this i think edit: pure message as mentioned below

 

also you may want to check with your lea as i know alot of the spam dodgy content is filtered for us by them e.g if the word C**K is in a email the email doesnt arrive. this will save you some money as we just use normal mcafee for.

Edited January 26, 2010 by glennda

[AIT]

Thanks for the details all.

 

Picking up on Domino's points. Can anyone recommend:

 

* Anti-Spam

* Exchange AV?

 

Anti-spam and antivirus i can recommend pure message. (Sophos)

 

However i do run spamassasin (custom built mail scanner) in front to filter out most of the junk before hitting the exchange box.

 

Depending if you are going to exchange 2007 - 2010 and how much mail i would recommend considering a separate box for spam filtering etc.

[Domino]

Sunbelt Ninja is a fairly good software based anti-spam. Its starting to choke on our loads now but I doubt you'd get near those.

 

The newest forefront is fairly good exchange AV, and i dunno if you can get it under your schools agreement?

[nicholab]

Have you considered zimbra as you are going for a new install?

[gshaw]

One recommendation for anti-spam... don't get PureMessage for Exchange Was hopeless for us at blocking the most obvious spam yet quarantined legit messages... now with MessageLabs but it's not cheap. Maybe some kind of Linux appliance might be a good idea as you're quite clued up in that area iirc?

 

Our Exchange 2007 box runs 400 users at fast speed with 8GB RAM, 320GB local storage and dual core dual CPU Opterons, although I'd go for 16GB minimum now with hardware prices as they are... can't go far wrong with HP servers

 

Or as an alternative use Live@Edu which is basically hosted Exchange 2010 for free?

[localzuk]

We use CA Etrust for our anti-virus at the moment...

 

And I mentioned Zimbra to my boss, even mentioning that it was developed as an exchange competitor by Yahoo and I was told 'no, we want an exchange box'...

 

I may talk further, to find out why we want it, but as it stands the answer is Exchange.

 

I will still present a Zimbra option too - which will come in cheaper of course

[sippo]

Another vote for pure message here. Easy to setup, and configure to your liking.

[spc-rocket]

Hi there,

 

How about a hosted av and spam filtering. We use a company called email filtering system from Email protection agency. Basically they provide a hosted av and spam filtering which you can control to create rules etc for your domain.

 

The way this works is that your mx records for your domain points to them and any email that comes to your exchange box is already scanned for viruses and spam filtered. Your exchange box uses the hosted solutions' MTA as a smart host to forward email and it recieved emails only from the hosted solutions provider's MTA so you only get screened emails which is virus and spam free.

 

The cost is not too bad either and you also don't need to worry about installing anything on the exchange box other than the exchange solution and a file system AV to protect the file system.

 

EPA - Email Protection Agency | Email Filtering Services

 

They also do archiving as well so all emails sent to your domain is archived even if they are spam etc.

 

 

Ash.

[PiqueABoo]

How about a hosted av and spam filtering.

 

Don't know about that particular one, but when something like 95% of mail is spam+bad stuff if you can get that filtered out upstream then I would. The risk is you won't be in charge of what they filter, but it's not necessarily that easy to be properly in charge when you've got it locally.

 

i'd be looking at 8GB RAM.

 

That's what I spec., largely based on MS saying that's pretty much the maximum for a single Exchange box, however a while ago someone on here said they seem to get better performance out of Exchanges (2007 at the time) with 16GB.

 

But for that number of users 8GB should be truckloads, just make sure you've got some spare slots in case manglement get to like it and later want all the kids to have mailboxes.

[ful56_uk]

Forefront for exhange does the job for us

[ZeroHour]

Schools Agreement hopefully should make it cheap for you. Do you buy the desktop pack lics for your pc's? I believe they include a exchange connector cal which covers you for that. Now I am pretty sure exchange is very cheap per year under SA, I have not seen the prices for a bit but I really thought it was cheap but I will have a look tomorrow.

You should email your SA account manager and ask him about what your covered for now and how much it is for the exchange lic per year.

Then you can use exchange's own antispam which is not bad, puremessage which we have had great experiences with here tbh (version 3) and its cheap, Microsofts TMG 2010 (aka isa 2010) which can do spam, MS forefront for exchange all as possible cheap options. Ask your SA guy for prices per year for all them and let us know how you get on.

[KeithMPhoenix]

You have options - depending on your future plans both Select or a Schools Agreement would work for you. Each have pro's and con's to consider.

Happy to discuss if need be.

On AV - well - often I find its personal preference, although of course the footprint of them can vary from vendor to vender so that would be something to consider.

Keith