How to Set-up Exchange 5.5 1

[sidjourney]

Hi- I'm very new as an Network Admin, other than doing Exchange Admin stuff, I got no clue on setting up Exchange 5.5. Could anyone help on this? i.e, "How to setup Exchange on PDF format" or links that could help me out. Thanks in advance.

 

[ChrisHirst]

Simpler Webb (

http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm)

and Slipstick (

http://www.slipstick.com)

are good places to look.

The setting up guide you get with Exchange 5.5 will take you through the general bits & pieces. I would suggest that you run a couple of test installs (use a Ghost image to overwrite the HD as the uninstall leaves lots behind) as once you set up the Organisation & Site names you are stuck with it. Be prepared to spend lots of time looking after it.
For Hardware, 3 HD (Physical not Logical) SCSI preferred, As much memory as you can fit, An Intel PII 300 CPU, Tape Drive for backups (This will probably be a life saver on many an occasion). Drive Configs; RAID can cause more problems for recovery should something fail, Mirrored Drives can be used to guard against drive failure but as the biggest problem tends to be database corruption both copies will be in the same state.
Regular backups with a good product (I use Backup Exec 8.6) are ESSENTIAL as is a sound anti virus policy and product (McAfee Groupshield) .

Chris.

 

[sidjourney]

ChrisHirst-
Thank you for your advise, I'm planning to use COMPAQ 7000 series 4 CPUs @600 with 12 18GB disks with 3072 RAM. Would this be over kill for 250+ users?

 

[ChrisHirst]

Pretty much, on that HW spec you could multiply your user base by a factor of 20 and still be running without the CPUs getting warm! But if your budget allows for that go for it! I run 150 users on a Fujitsu Seimens Primergy Dual PIII 700, 1G Ram, 4x9G + 2x18G SCSI drives on a Mylex controller and the CPU % stats rarely go above 20% at peak times.

Chris.