Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 - page 25

Summary

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 continues to build on a solid history of messaging servers. Improvements in the architecture of Exchange 2007 allow for continued innovation, improvement, and scalability. The move to the 64-bit architecture is clearly needed to allow Exchange to be enhanced further and to reduce I/O requirements.

Server installation and configuration has been further enhanced and simplified by the introduction of server roles; the person that performs the Exchange Server installation chooses, which components are necessary for a particular server's function.

Chapter 3: Designing a New Exchange 2007 System

Overview

Whether your system will be based on a single Exchange server in a single physical location or hundreds of Exchange servers spread out over multiple locations, you need to consider a number of design issues before implementation. This chapter presents a step-by-step planning model based loosely on a process developed by Microsoft. Tracking and retracking through these steps will help your organization decide where it wants to go with electronic messaging and how it can get there with Exchange.

One of the common reasons that Exchange server deployments are slow or have many problems is that organizations don't take the time to properly gather and review all of the relevant information. We can tell you from lots of experience that this process really works. Generally, we have found that we can gather any required information and generate a fairly complex first-draft plan, complete with a most convincing executive summary, in a month or so.

Warning

Exchange deployments often fail when all of the factors that affect Exchange and Active Directory are not considered .

This chapter isn't just about design, though. It also offers practical information about Exchange Server 2007 and how it works. For example, you'll find detailed information about Exchange's network connection options: what they do and which networking topologies and protocols support them. Information such as this is central to designing and implementing an Exchange system, and it's not found anywhere else in this book.

This is a long chapter covering a great deal of information in detail. Just as you wouldn't try to implement a complex Exchange system in one day, you shouldn't try to plow through this chapter in one hour .

Note

We cover installing Exchange Server 2007 as well as migrating Exchange Server 2000/2003 systems to Exchange Server 2007 in later chapters. However, even if your immediate goal is a migration, we strongly suggest you first carefully read this chapter.

Much of the information found in this chapter will be more relevant to an organization that is deploying Exchange Server for the first time, but we hope even organizations that are upgrading from Exchange 2000/2003 (or earlier) will still find some useful information in this chapter. If you are new to Exchange management and someone else designed your organization's Exchange infrastructure, this chapter may be of use to you when figuring out why some of the things are designed the way they are.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

Assigning accountabilities for planning, design, and management
Performing a needs assessment
Planning your network configuration
Rolling out the plan

Taking the Large View

This discussion builds upon a process presented by Microsoft in the Exchange documentation and other Microsoft publications , but it is far from a word-for-word regurgitation. Therefore, you should blame us - not Microsoft - if you encounter any problems from following the advice we give in this chapter. (And of course, if this stuff helps in any way, you should send the fruit baskets and such to us.)

Some of these steps include selecting an Active Directory architecture. Active Directory is widely deployed and thus some of these steps will probably be irrelevant for you. However, we hope you will find some relevance and useful information, so here, then, are the steps that we suggest you follow in designing your Exchange Server 2007 system:

Assign planning, design, and management responsibilities to staff.
Assess user needs.
Study your organization's geographic profile.
Assess your organization's network.
Establish naming conventions.
Select a Microsoft networking domain model.
Define your Active Directory site infrastructure
Define administrative responsibilities.
Plan message routing links.
Plan servers and internal connections.
Plan connections to other systems.
Validate and optimize your design.
Deploy a test lab or a pilot project with a small group of users.
Roll out the plan.

These steps fit nicely into four categories:

Delegating the planning, design, and management of your Exchange 2007 system
Analyzing user and technical needs
Dealing with the complex tasks involved in network planning
Rolling out your Exchange system

As you go through this process, we strongly recommend that you and each of your team members take copious notes and that these notes be combined to form a journal that documents the process you took to arrive at your design decisions. This is often useful later when you need to figure out why you made certain decisions.

Now let's discuss each of the steps in more detail. The following sections fully describe all the tasks of designing and setting up an Exchange 2007 system and getting all the users up and running.

Throughout this chapter, remember that designing an Exchange system is not a linear process but an iterative one. You'll find yourself coming back to each of the steps to gather new information, to reinterpret information that you've already gathered, and to collect even more information based on those reinterpretations. New information will likely lead to new questions, design changes, and further iterations. Even after you've fully implemented your Exchange Server 2007 system, you'll return to steps in the design process as problems arise or as your organization changes.

Within reason, the more iterations that you go through, the better your final design will be. But take care not to use iteration as a route to procrastination. Whatever you do, start running Exchange 2007 - if only in a limited test environment - as soon as you can.