1.6 How this book is organized

Over the last several years, as I have talked with organizations and individuals deploying Exchange Server in mission-critical environments, it has become ever so apparent that no complete work or body of knowledge is available that addresses this topic in its entirety for Microsoft Exchange Server. Microsoft and other sources provide bits and pieces of this information, but fail in completeness and accuracy. Also, even though much of this information is available, there is no comprehensive resource that brings all of the issues together and addresses them in the context of Exchange Server. The information and technologies also change at a rapid rate often difficult for most deployments to keep pace with. The goal and mission for this book are to provide a complete and accurate resource for Exchange Server deployment personnel to use in their daily activities. My hope is that the material provided will truly provide a basis for deploying mission-critical Exchange within any organization. The book is organized into three main parts that helped me manage my thought processes during the course of this project. My hope is that this organizational method will also be translated into your understanding as you approach, plan, implement, and evolve these best practices and techniques for your Exchange environment. Figure 1.2 illustrates the organization of this book as an approach to building mission-critical Exchange environments from the ground up with each layer resting on the previous.

Figure 1.2: How mission critical Exchange Server 2003 is organized.

Part I is the core knowledge layer. The chapters in this section form a basis and thesis for proceeding through the entire book. They start with the definition of what mission critical means to an Exchange deployment and show you how to analyze, assess risk and downtime, and set service-level requirements that meet your organizational needs for the reliability of your messaging, collaboration, or knowledge-management system, the basis of which Exchange Server will form. I also believe that you need a thorough understanding of any technology or system in order to sustain any reasonable period of reliability, scalability, security, and manageability. Thus, mission-critical systems require implementers and administrators to have a keen understanding of the key technologies that underpin these systems.

Part II of this book is the key technologies layer. In this part, we will look closer at Exchange and industry technologies that enable us to build mission-critical deployments. First, by looking at the Exchange Server storage system or database engine (the Extensible Storage Engine, or ESE) and then building on that storage technology by looking at how Exchange recovery is performed (Chapter 4, “When Exchange Servers Fall Down,” we will gain a thorough understand of how the core of Exchange Server really works. This will enable us to have further discussions around disaster recovery and other deployment best practices. We will look at Exchange Server clustering capabilities and visit some of the enhancements in Exchange Server 2003, as well of some of the lessons learned since Exchange 2000 Server shipped in September 2000. The key technologies section will conclude with a look at the industry standard hardware technologies that are available, upon which we can build mission-critical systems.

Part III of this book deals with the techniques, approaches, best practices, and proactive management technologies and techniques that should be applied by every IT organization—not just Exchange Server deployments. With the first parts as a foundation, this part builds on these by discussing disaster recovery for Exchange Server and the importance of security and proactive management for achieving mission-critical environments. The focus of Part III is to identify how administrators and implementers can be more proactive about ensuring reliability for Exchange Server. This part would not be complete without a look at security issues and protection from malicious activities such as viruses and denial-of-service attacks. Proactive management and administration techniques, along with establishment of solid configuration and change-management practices, will comprise the core of Part III. Again, I believe that management practices can have the most significant effect on Exchange Server reliability and high availability.

Mission-critical Exchange servers are a reality today. However, much of the onus for ensuring reliability and meeting SLAs falls on the Exchange deployment planners, implementers, and administrators. Microsoft alone can not provide all the tools that one needs for disaster-tolerant and reliable Exchange servers. By partnering with Microsoft and third-party hardware, software, and service vendors, the highest levels of uptime can be achieved for Microsoft Exchange Server deployments. My hope is that this book will provide a starting point and basis for successful implementation of mission-critical Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 server deployments.