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:

1. Assign planning, design, and management responsibilities to staff.

2. Assess user needs.

3. Study your organization's geographic profile.

4. Assess your organization's network.

5. Establish naming conventions.

6. Select a Microsoft networking domain model.

7. Define your Active Directory site infrastructure

8. Define administrative responsibilities.

9. Plan message routing links.

10. Plan servers and internal connections.

11. Plan connections to other systems.

12. Validate and optimize your design.

13. Deploy a test lab or a pilot project with a small group of users.

14. 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.

Exchange Design Is Iterative, Not Linear

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.