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single server, single site to multi server, multi site ... - 2.Feb.2008 5:34:25 PM

nathan.day

Posts: 8
Joined: 7.Feb.2007
Status: offline

Hello all.

I need a gentle push in the right direction. The company that I'm working for is being amalgamated with another company, to form an entirely new organisation. As a result, we will have a new domain name, as well as maintaining old domains for a period of time to ensure that all mail is still received.

We will be operating from two seperate offices, connected by a synchronous 10Mbps link. At each site is a MSExchange Server 2003 Standard server. My question is this. How best can I link the two exchange servers to provide localised servers at each site; that is, site A's store will be on server A, site B's on server B.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Does anybody know of any articles that might help?

Thanks in advance.

Post #: 1

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RE: single server, single site to multi server, multi s... - 2.Feb.2008 6:34:14 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
Status: offline

At its simplest level, you keep the mailboxes for the users of SiteA on the Exchange server at SiteA, and those for SiteB on the Exchange server at SiteB.

The easiest way to link to the two Exchange servers is to put them in the same Exchange organization (which implies that they are in the same AD forest). That will automatically take care of the inter-office mail (which you can override if you have special routing considerations).

At a higher level, you need to make decisions about routing. Which site will field the inbound mail for the amalgamated domain name? Control that with the DNS MX record(s) for this new domain space.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to nathan.day)

Post #: 2

RE: single server, single site to multi server, multi s... - 2.Feb.2008 7:24:30 PM

nathan.day

Posts: 8
Joined: 7.Feb.2007
Status: offline

Thanks for that Dean

Do we need to upgrade to Enterprise edition?

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 3

RE: single server, single site to multi server, multi s... - 2.Feb.2008 8:08:37 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
Status: offline

Exchange Enterprise Edition differs from the Standard Edition in the following ways:

1. Standard allows one Storage Group containing a single Mailbox Store. Enterprise allows up to four Storage Groups each containing up to five Mailbox Stores.

2. Standard with no SP or with SP1 allows a Mailbox Store to reach a maximum of 16GB. Standard with SP2 or later allows a Mailbox Store to reach a maximum of 75GB. Enterprise allows a Mailbox Store to reach the theoritical maximum size of a Windows file - essentially having no limit because you really wouldn't allow a store to get that big.

If you need more than what Standard offers as described above, then you need Enterprise.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to nathan.day)

Post #: 4

RE: single server, single site to multi server, multi s... - 12.Feb.2008 7:16:17 AM

nathan.day

Posts: 8
Joined: 7.Feb.2007
Status: offline

Another question.

Will everything be fine with just a single exchange server at each site? or will we need a front-end server?

Also, with our DNS MX records, will sending & receiving work fine if we use a round-robin approach and have the same weighting for each server? ie:

MX preference = 10, mail exchanger site-A-server.domain
MX preference = 10, mail exchanger site-B-server.domain

... or should we just have a single server responsible for sending/receiving mail?

Once again, thanks for your help

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 5

RE: single server, single site to multi server, multi s... - 12.Feb.2008 9:44:29 AM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
Status: offline

quote:

Will everything be fine with just a single exchange server at each site? or will we need a front-end server?

Front-end servers are not a requirement. If you think about it, if you are a single site you don't have to have a front-end.

quote:

should we just have a single server responsible for sending/receiving mail?

MX records dictate where you will receive mail. It doesn't have any significance towards sending mail. Although you can certainly set up the MX records to round-robin (load balance) in the manner you describe, it's more common to designate one site the primary receiver. This can be for a number of reasons, including number of users at each site and Internet bandwidth into each site. The worst case scenario for you would be that every inbound message comes to the wrong server, forcing Exchange to send it across to the other site.

In other words, if there are significantly more users at one site, I'd prioritize the MX records that way.

You can have each Exchange server send outbound mail.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to nathan.day)

Post #: 6

RE: single server, single site to multi server, multi s... - 12.Feb.2008 7:37:35 PM