| Microsoft Exchange Server |
Article Index for Microsoft |
Website Links For Microsoft Exchange |
Information AboutMicrosoft Exchange Server |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SERVER | |
| windows server system | |
| exchange server | |
| groupware | |
| mail transport agents | |
| exchange | |
| irc daemons | |
| microsoft e-mail software | |
|
HISTORY The original version of Exchange was envisioned as a X.400 -based mail server that also supported the X.500 directory standard. This product replaced the Microsoft Mai l product originally acquired from Network Courier. Exchange was a client server based mail system that used a single database store. The Exchange 4.0 Directory formed the initial foundation for Microsoft's Active Directory service, an LDAP -compliant directory server. Active Directory was later integrated into Windows 2000 as the foundation of Windows Server Domain s. Exchange 5.5 was sold in two editions, Standard ("5.5/S") and Enterprise ("5.5/E"). They differ in database store size, "connectors," and clustering capabilities. The Standard edition has a database size limitation of 16GB, the Enterprise edition has a limit of 16TB - effectively unlimited for all practical purposes. The Standard edition is packaged with a Site Connector, MS Mail Connector, cc: Mail Connector, MS Notes Connector, Internet Mail Service, and Internet News Connector. The Enterprise edition adds on top of that: PROFS, X.400 , and SNADS Connectors. The Enterprise edition can be clustered, while Standard cannot. Exchange 2000 overcame many of the limitations of its predecessors, Exchange 4.0 and 5.5. For example, it raised the maximum sizes of databases and increased the number of servers in a cluster from two to four. However, many customers were deterred from upgrading by the requirement for a full Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure to be in place. This, in turn, required upgrading a company's servers to Windows 2000. Some customers opted to stay on a combination of Exchange 5.5 and Windows NT , both of which are no longer supported by Microsoft. VERSION HISTORY
CURRENT VERSION The current version of Exchange is 2003 SP2. It can be run on Windows 2000 Server (only if Service Pack 4 is first installed) and Windows Server 2003 , although some new features only work with the latter. Like Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2003 has many compatibility modes to allow users to slowly migrate to the new system. This is useful in large companies with distributed Exchange environments who cannot afford the downtime and expense that comes with a complete migration.
Exchange 2003 is available in two versions, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Standard Edition supports one message database per server, and supports databases up to 16 GB in size. Beginning with the release of Service Pack 2, Standard Edition allows a maximum database size of 75 GB, but only supports 18 GB by default; a registry change is necessary to make the database size either larger or smaller than the new default 18GB size. Enterprise Edition allows a 16 TB maximum database size, and supports up to 20 databases per server. Exchange 2003 is included with the Microsoft Small Business Server Product. Microsoft Exchange Server uses a Proprietary RPC protocol, of which only the API is documented (see MAPI ), and is used by the Microsoft Outlook client. Email hosted on an Exchange server can be accessed by numerous client software packages including Lotus Notes . If configured, Exchange accounts can also be accessed through a web browser, known as Outlook Web Access (OWA). Coupled with Windows Mobile 5.0 and SP2, Exchange Server 2003 supports "pushing" email to mobile devices - similar to the operation of BlackBerry devices: More info, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/sp2mobility.mspx and http://www.palmblvd.com/articles/2005/10/2005-10-19-Microsoft-Looks-to.html Unlike Exchange Server 2000, Exchange Server 2003 no longer natively supports instant messaging for internal corporate systems. Microsoft released Live Communication Server to provide those services instead. Exchange 2003 Anti-Spam Filtering:
CLUSTERING Exchange Enterprise Edition supports clustering of up to 4 nodes when using Windows 2000 Server, and up to 8 nodes with Windows Server 2003. Exchange 2003 also introduced Active/Active clustering, but for two node clusters only. In this setup, both servers in the cluster are allowed to be active simultaneously. This is opposed to Exchange's more common Active/Passive mode in which the failover servers in any cluster node cannot be used at all while their corresponding home servers are active. They must wait, inactive, for the home servers in the node to fail. Subsequent performance issues with Active/Active mode have led Microsoft to recommend that it should no longer be used . In fact, Active/Active mode may well be removed from the next release of Exchange altogether. Exchange's clustering (Active/Active or Active/Passive mode) has been criticised because of its requirement for servers in the cluster nodes to share the same physical data. The clustering in Exchange provides redundancy for Exchange as an ''application'', but not for Exchange ''data'' . In this scenario, the data can be regarded as a Single Point Of Failure , despite Microsoft's description of this set up as a "Shared Nothing" model . FUTURE For some time after the release of Exchange 2003, Microsoft's future plans for the product were unclear, with no new version promised. Edge Services, an add-on for the main product, was to have been been released sometime in 2005 but was dropped. A January 2005 announcement from Microsoft filled in some gaps. The new version, currently called Exchange 12, or E12, is to be released on DVD only in 2006/07. The new version is to include voice mail integration, better search and support for Web services. The company also announced that the new version would run on 64-bit version of Windows only , pointing out the substantial performance benefits that 64-bit brings to the product. However, companies currently running Exchange on 32-bit hardware will be forced to replace it if they wish to upgrade to the new version. Even those companies that are currently running Exchange on 64-bit capable hardware will still need to upgrade their server OS simultaneosly with the E12 upgrade. This is because Exchange 2003 cannot be installed on Windows 2003 64-bit . The first beta of E12 was released in December 2005 to a very limited number of beta testers; a wider beta available via TechNet Plus and MSDN subscriptions was released in early March 2006 according to the MS Exchange team blog, " You had me at EHLO .". More details about Exchange 12 can be found at the Exchange Preview Website On April 25 2006 , Microsoft announced that the next version of Exchange will be called Exchange Server 2007. LICENSING Like Windows Server products, Exchange requires Client Access Licenses, which are different than Windows CALs. However, you do not need Windows Server CALs for users only accessing the Exchange server software on each Exchange server. Most corporate license agreements include Exchange CALs. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|