Preface and Acknowledgements

The Increasing Importance of being Mission Critical

After Mission Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server was published in November of 2000, I was a bit disappointed that more “Exchange-ites” were not running out to buy it in droves (sales were good but non-drove-like…). The truth is that my passion for the subject was ahead of its time. At the time, most Exchange administrators were still trying figure if and how they would deploy Exchange 2000 and were far less concerned about making their deployments mission critical. As I write this, we are still looking at an installed base of Exchange Server that is mostly version 5.5-based (making this effort less relevant). However, I think the tide is turning with Microsoft’s emphasis on Exchange 200x and increased incentives for upgrade (or disincentives for not upgrading). In addition, the features of the latest product offerings are very compelling to most organizations. The end result is that more and more organizations will begin and complete their deployments of Exchange 2000/2003 in the next year and will be well positioned (I certainly hope so, anyway…) and ready to look at the mission critical aspects of their messaging services.

The pressures of modern business and the utility and pervasiveness of email in most organizations will compel them to look at increasing availability and reliability of these systems. As such, taking the next steps beyond basic deployment and administration of Exchange systems and focusing on making these systems mission critical will make my effort this time around on this book much more worthwhile This is not to say that it was not worthwhile last time but I that it is both worthwhile and timely this time around. Businesses need a competitive advantage. Productive employees with excellent tools create one source of competitive advantage. Mission critical messaging systems (running Exchange Server, of course) are therefore not just important, they are a necessity.

When preparing to write this book, I took the approach that you, the reader, already know quite a lot about Exchange Server and that you are looking to extended your knowledge and get another perspective in the area of high availability and mission critical system deployment. In fact, you may have already read Tony Redmond’s Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 (ISBN: 1555582788) and want to continue your exploration of Elsevier’s Exchange Server series. In addition, there are many excellent books on Exchange Server available from other publishers. In writing this book, I was looking to provide something that can complement these already excellent resources available from authors such as Kieran McCorry, Paul Robichaux, Sue Mosher and several others. I wanted to give you a perspective that was not necessarily lacking in other resources but one that extends and drills down further on important high availability topics for Exchange deployment.

As such, I purposely neglect certain topics that I consider important but not necessarily as relevant to the intended purpose of this book. Exchange 2000/2003 is a huge and complex product that has many technologies and components that go into its making. However, I have tried to focus on core technologies such as Exchange’s Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) that directly impact important availability issues like disaster recovery, storage management, security, and clustering. More time and pages invested in providing a complete Exchange 2000/2003 technology tutorial would have resulted a tome of extraordinary volume (see Tony Redmond’s tome…). I will leave that task to very able-bodied authors. For my part, I simply considered the topics most important for mission critical Exchange deployments. My desire is that these topics covered in these pages will complement your existing knowledge and enable you to deploy mission critical Exchange deployments.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I must thank God for the gifts and talents He has given me. In my continuing faith, God has blessed beyond my wildest dreams for success in career and endeavors such as my writing activities. Any successes, any talents, any glory, I owe all to God.

I also must recognize the tremendous support and encouragement that my wife Petronella (“Nella”) has provided me throughout the course of this project. I am tremendously blessed to have a wife that fully supports my dreams, little pet projects, and endeavors such as this one. When I approached her the second time around to write this updated book, she provided unquestioning support and encouragement. For that I owe her much love and eternal gratitude.

I would also like to thank my parents (Bill and Diane Cochran) for their love and support always. For raising me right and instilling certain values that have enabled me to become the man I am (not without flaws but without many regrets). Thanks for bringing me up in a Christian home, with a strong work ethic, and with the knowledge that I can do anything in this world that my heart chooses to do.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank those who encouraged my writing and got me started down the path to publication. Thanks are due to Greg Todd and Karen Forster for handing me my first opportunity to write for publication. To Tony Redmond for his constant encouragement and support of my writing when I was with Compaq/HP. To the staff at Windows & .NET Magazine – Janet Robbins, Michelle Crockett, and Amy Eisenberg, in particular, thank you for your unwavering support of my writing and for giving me the opportunity to write for the best Windows and Exchange-focused publication in the business.

I would also like to thank the staff at Digital Press/Elsevier Science. Special thanks go to Pam Chester and Theron Shreve for their support and encouragement during the course of this project and their constant “ bravos” and coaching. I also want to thank Alan Rose for an providing aggressive copyedit schedule and effort and getting this book out in a timely and accurate manner. To Paul Robichaux, I offer my sincere appreciation for our on-going association and his superior intellect employed in the technical editing effort for this book.

To the greater community of Exchange gurus worldwide, I also offer acknowledge to the tremendous value you bring to my work. Without the forums and communities of expertise that exist, the would be far less knowledge available to the “common man” regarding Exchange. For these and, in particular, my colleagues at HP such as Tony Redmond, Kieran McCorry, Pierre Bijaoui, Kevin Laahs, Donald Livengood, Dung Hoang Khac, Jan De Clercq, and Evan Morris, thanks for your continued contributions to the available knowledge in this space.

I must also acknowledge my colleagues at Microsoft. First, Exchange Server is a product developed in one of the most innovative environments at Microsoft. Over the last several years since its inception, Exchange has continued to reach to greater heights. Many on the techniques and technologies that I leverage for discussions in this book would not be possible without the intense degree of focus that the Exchange Server Product unit at Microsoft has. To the folks in the Microsoft Exchange Product Unit, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude. To Perry Clarke, Terry Myerson, Chris Baker, Ed Wu, David Howell, Marc Allen, Laurion Burchall (Windows), Larry LeSueur, Greg Chapman, Ken Ewert, Nicole Bonilla, and Aidan Delaney, thanks for answering all my technical questions, your support, and for giving me insider status within one of the best and brightest development teams at Microsoft.

Finally, since joining Microsoft in the Operations and Technology Group (OTG) in September 2002, I have gained valuable experience and understanding of deployment, operations, and management of a worldclass messaging environment managed by Derek Ingalls. This team performs miracles every day for a very demanding Exchange user base (Microsoft). I must acknowledge and thank Derek and his team for providing a real-world IT environment from which I can learn even more about deploying mission critical Exchange.

Jerry Cochran
[e-mail]
September 2003