Chapter 1: Has Anyone Seen My Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange Server?

1.1 Why are we here?

When I first used e-mail many years ago, I was not particularly impressed with any potential benefit that would be ultimately realized for businesses and consumers. In fact, e-mail for me in those early days was more of a novelty than a business-critical application. What was once simple e-mail has today evolved into mission-critical messaging and collaboration. Today, businesses and consumers alike rely on messaging systems like Microsoft Exchange Server to fulfill critical communication requirements in their personal and professional lives. This development has grown even since the release of Exchange 2000. In fall 2000, when Exchange 2000 shipped and my first edition of Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000 was published, I knew that messaging and collaboration were something on which businesses were becoming more and more dependent. However, even since then, messaging and collaboration have become downright mission-critical . Thus, we are here again reemphasizing this point and looking at the next version of Microsoft Exchange Server—code-named Titanium and marketed as Exchange Server 2003.

1.1.1 The evolution of Exchange 2000 Server

When the first edition of Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000 was published in November 2000, Exchange 2000 Server had just shipped and system administrators and implementers were looking forward to deploying this new version of Exchange Server. Part of the reason this version was so interesting was the promise of new features that would ultimately make their lives a little easier. Exchange 2000 Server touted features such as a partitioned storage model (storage groups and multiple databases), an SMTP Messaging Transfer Agent (MTA) and routing engine, and multinode/ active-active clustering too. Exchange 2000 held a lot of promise for Exchange administrators when it came to deploying more scalable, reliable, and manageable systems.

Unfortunately, many of the dreams of system managers did not come true. While Exchange 2000 did offer improvements in many areas, its dependence on Windows Active Directory drastically stalled its adoption rate. In fact, Microsoft estimates that only 15% to 20% of Exchange deployments have actually migrated to Exchange 2000. Industry researchers and analysts estimate this percentage to be even smaller (Gartner Group estimates the number to be between 5% and 10%). While Exchange 2000 offers many new features and benefits, customers have been impeded by other issues (Active Directory deployment, cost/ROI, and the economic environment).

Since its release in Fall 2000, Exchange 2000 has continued to evolve rapidly as the customers who have deployed it have been generous in their feedback and criticisms on how Microsoft can improve the product. In addition, once customers began to deploy Exchange 2000, some serious issues were soon discovered that impacted the reliability and scalability of the product. For example, Microsoft had no idea of the impact that Exchange 2000 would have on the Active Directory infrastructure. Large-scale deployments of Exchange 2000 within Microsoft and at customers like General Electric, Compaq Computer Corporation (now HP), Motorola, Intel, and several others soon began to reveal the flaws in Exchange 2000, including Active Directory access issues, routing issues, clustering issues, security concerns, and many other issues. Because Exchange 2000 was such a drastic architectural overhaul for Exchange Server (compared with earlier versions), many unexpected problems plagued early deployments.

Shortly after release, Microsoft set forth on an extensive project to build the next version of Exchange Server (which was called Mercury at the time). However, sensing that customers were not ready to embrace yet another major release of Exchange Server, Microsoft soon scaled back plans and what was once a major product release was scaled back to four service pack releases of Exchange 2000. Banking on the feedback from customers that they wanted another stable product like they had in Exchange 5.5, Microsoft decided that customer acceptance would be much more favorable if they introduced minor improvements and bug fixes in the Exchange 2000 product over the next 2 to 3 years and allowed customer adoption to catch up and stabilize. Since then, we have seen the release of Exchange 2000 Service Packs 1 through 3—each seeking to provide mainly bug fixes, but also introducing minor feature improvements in areas like routing, DS Access (Exchange 2000’s Active Directory access mechanism), Outlook Web Access (OWA), and clustering. In unprecedented form, Microsoft has added minor features to these service pack releases (Microsoft usually does not add features in service packs)—striking a compromise between their original plans for a major new release and the product stability requested by customers.

Exchange Server 2003

If you remember from the earlier discussion, I mentioned that Microsoft chose to not release a major new version of Exchange Server (what was known originally as the Mercury release scheduled for late 2002), but instead released a series of four service packs to Exchange 2000. You also may have noticed that I have only mentioned three service packs thus far. This is because things always change when you are developing and marketing software. Service Pack 4 was slated for release in late 2002 and to be the culmination of Exchange 2000 service pack releases that would carry customers to the next generation of Exchange (what we now know as the Kodiak release, which is not scheduled to be out until the 2004–2005 time frame). However, Microsoft soon realized that Exchange 2000 Service Pack 4 would simply offer too many product improvements and new features for it to be merely a service pack release. Thus, Exchange Titanium was born. Exchange Server 2003 (Titanium) is built upon the same basic foundation and architecture as Exchange 2000 Server. In fact, it would be best to simply view Exchange Server 2003 as a minor release of the product similar to the advance from Exchange 5.0 to Exchange 5.5 that we experienced in 1997. By this, I mean that there are enough significant enhancements in Exchange Server 2003 to differentiate it as a product release (versus a service pack), but not enough differences to justify a major upgrade. Fundamentally, Exchange Server 2003 is Exchange 2000 plus 2 years of bug fixes and some important new feature enhancements that will directly impact the reliability, scalability, manageability, and security of Exchange Server deployments. Significant feature enhancements include the following:

Exchange Server 2003/Outlook 2003 cached mode: An enhancement of the traditional off-line mode of Outlook where the client and server participate in a caching scheme that synchronizes a local copy of user data between the client and server. This results in fewer bytes on the network and an overall enhanced end-user experience.

Windows Server clustering improvements: Exchange and Windows have made several improvements to clustering support in Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 that make clustering a more viable option for increasing the availability of large Exchange servers.

Outlook Web Access (OWA) improvements: New features in OWA such as spell check, S/MIME support, attachment blocking, and interface alignment with Outlook 2003 make the OWA experience much richer for users.

Snapshot backup and restore with Windows Server 2003: Windows Server 2003 provides the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), and Exchange supports this functionality, enabling rapid backup and restore scenarios for Exchange.

Virus Scanning API (VSAPI) 2.5 and other security enhancements: Exchange 2003 is the first Exchange version to benefit from Microsoft’s extensive Trustworthy Computing Initiative. New features in antivirus and antispam, as well as other security enhancements, are evidence of this.

Messaging mobility enhancements: Through the integration of Mobile Information Server (MIS) with Exchange Server 2003 Server, mobile messaging solutions are enabled and reduce total cost of ownership.

Exchange Server 2003 is also a key milestone for Microsoft in which both the Exchange Server and the client (Outlook) will be aligned from a technology standpoint and ship in the same time frame. This has not happened since Outlook 97 and Exchange Server 5.5 in 1997. This may seem trivial, but it represents some key alignments in terms of feature sets and maximum client and server experience and functionality. Exchange Server 2003 is also the first version of Exchange to embody the essence of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Initiative. Beginning with this release, Microsoft developers placed the highest degree of emphasis on building a secure product. The painstaking review of every feature and its impact on security has made Exchange Server 2003 the most security-focused release ever. This fact, along with the alignment of Exchange Server and Outlook, the ability of Exchange Server 2003 to leverage Windows Server 2003, and other key feature enhancements, as well as 2 years (2000 through 2002) of bug fixes, patches, and best practice improvements, fosters great confidence in Exchange Server 2003 being the most reliable, scalable, manageable, and secure version of Exchange Server yet. This makes our quest to build mission-critical Exchange deployments all that much easier!

Charting a course with mission-critical Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

Therefore, as we set out on our mission of building mission-critical Exchange Server 2003 deployments, it is paramount that we understand this frame of reference. Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 then is really a second edition to my original book Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000 and will strive to build upon the first edition by including lessons learned, as well as changes in the technology around us and new features and enhancements in the Exchange 2003 product. Hopefully, we have learned a few things since Exchange 2000 was released in 2000, and we can benefit from the troubles and toils of Exchange administrators who have gone before us. In addition, we can leverage interesting and exciting new features that Microsoft has made available in Exchange 2003. The combination of hardcore administrator and system-implementer experience with product improvements and advances in industry-standard hardware and software technologies will help us plan, design, build, manage, and support rock-solid Exchange 2003 deployments that meet the ever-increasing business requirements for messaging and collaboration systems.