Exchange server advice please

[smile2011]

Hi

 

I've been tasked with specing up an exchange 2010 server for about 100 users can anyone give me some advice or point me to guides to read up on?

 

I don't have much exchange experience so I'm not sure what I exactly require.

 

 

 

thanks

 

Bob

[dhicks]

I've been tasked with specing up an exchange 2010 server for about 100 users can anyone give me some advice or point me to guides to read up on?

 

Hardware-wise, we have our Exchange 2010 server running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine with one virtual CPU and 4GB of RAM assigned. We don't have 100 simultanious users, we have maybe up to 50 people connected at one time, but performance seems fine - I'm guessing that any basic server or virtual machine will be adequate. Do you already have a Windows domain? If not, you'll need to set one of those up, and you'll need to run that on a separate server (or, at least, a separate virtual machine) from your Exchange server. If you're worried about performance, assign the Exchange database a dedicated disk block of its own (i.e. dedicate a RAID array to the Exchange server). Do you have an existing Exchange server to move from? If so, you can keep the existing Exchange server running alongside the new one while you transition, you don't have to move over all in one go (you even get 90 days free licensing to help you along). If you don't currently have an Exchange server, consider using something else entirely - Google's Gmail, maybe, or a (free) web-based email system you can host on your own servers like SquirrelMail.

[sukh]

1. Use the exchange calculator to help you size/design your databases

 

2. make sure you meet sys requirements for exch 2010

 

3. Understand how you should deploy exch, I.e transition or migration.

 

4. understand what your requirements are and how you will meet them, I.e do you need HA for each role, mbx/cas/hub

 

5. Understand backup/restore requirements.

 

6. If it's only for 100 users, it's going to be a fairly easy deployment. However, manage your storage for these users.

 

7. if you can get metric for your current users, use this as a baseline and calculate your requirements for resources needed for exch

 

Sukh

[KK20]

As per previous. What infrastructure do you have at the moment? Exchange 2010 will only work on x64 and is a fair memory hog too. I imagine with 100 users you wont have a SAN or virtualised environment so your existing hardware may need a decent upgrade or even replacement. I gave up with coexistance with our 2003 and migrated in the holidays. It took 1 day to set up the new server (2008 x64 on quad xeon, 900gb raid 6 with 6gb RAM - hindsight says more RAM but budget wouldnt allow it), 1 morning to migrate 300 mailboxes then decomission the old server. I had no experience with exchange 2010 or 2007.

 

I initially used this guide (which talks about planning) Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 and also used Upgrade to Exchange 2010: Exchange 2010 Help as a reference to the different tasks I needed to do. https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ can be used to test your site externally afterwards. Best practice analyser is a good idea too (although it does freak out with the wildcard certificate)

 

We also use exchange 2010 with a wildcard certificate - it can be done. Our wildcard certificate (free from IPSCA I wasnt paying for a SAN one) is *.mydomain.com whereas our internal domain and primary SMTP is mydomain.mycounty.sch.uk.local (mydomain.com is a secondary SMTP) it is all how you name the certificate as a "friendly name" and also get ISA (TMG) to pass the requests backwards and make sure you have internal DNS zones sorted out correctly. It all worked for us without any issues (OWA, IMAPS works fine). In fact I would say this was easier than moving sophos from one server to another - which was a nightmare.