Preface

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Covering Exchange

The Exchange product has steadily become more complex over the years. In 1996, the problems that system administrators and designers faced were simpler than today. Hardware was significantly less capable, and some of the early deployments rolled out on 100-MHz Pentiums equipped with 128 MB of memory and a whole 4 GB of disk. While these systems did not support the thousands of mailboxes that today's servers commonly take on, they were as difficult to manage because the management tools and utilities were not as developed as today. However, the overall environment was less demanding, which in turn meant that it was easier for people to write books about Exchange.

Given everything that has happened since 1996 and today, I am not so sure that Exchange is easy to write about anymore. Massive tomes have replaced the slim volumes that could credibly claim to contain all the best practices that you need to deploy Exchange. I have given up trying to cover everything, because I know I just cannot hope to discuss all possible topics, so I am afraid that this book represents a very personal view of the challenges of understanding the technology inside Exchange and how best to deploy it. I therefore seek your indulgence if I omit your favorite topic and can only suggest that you check out some of the other books about Exchange.

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