Limited budget, what's the min. no of servers required for Exch 2003?

[zacca]

Hi there,

I'm in an office with 50 users, simple network with 1 W2K server, single forest/domain.

Now wanna deploy Exch 2K3, as budget is limited, what's the min. no of new servers required? Can I install everything into 1 server? Or at least should have 1 FE exch server + 1 BE exch server?

Need to have OWA, POP, SMTP, Public folders, etc

Many thanks!

 

[Dagoth]

exchange 2003 will run quite happily on one server for the number of users that you have.

We will be running 65 users on the following box.

Dual P4 Xeon 2.8Ghz
1024MB RAM
72GB RAID 5
Dual NIC


you can also make it house all the 2003 server roles as well (AD, DNS, DHCP, GC) - providing it's a reasonable specification (ours is a bit overkill for the number of users, but then I don't have a budget to worry about

 

[Marcs41]

As mentioned by Dagoth, 1 server will pull it of.
Just provide enough memory and diskspace!
If it becomes to slow, depending what else you do with the server, you can still move it to a new one.

Marc
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[fitzie22]

From personal experience I would not put exchange on your only server. If the store gets messed adn you have to rbuild your whole network is down. There are a lot more moving parts in exchange for that to happen. I would sudgest trying to scrape together money even for a pc with 2 140gb ide drives with raid 1 and then put win 2000 serverand and make it a domain controller, that way you have redundency with AD. If you have everything on one server adn AD gets messed up you are in hell. then put exchange on teh new box. that is what I would do. I would not compromise the redundance for 1000 bucks.

 

[zacca]

Thanks for all the comments!

Just 1 more question, say now I propose 1 existing W2K server, plus 1 new W2K3+EXC2K3 server, & install all Exch components into the new server.

For that new Exch server running all components, will there be any security issues?

Many thanks!

 

[Marcs41]

There is always security issues, it is up to you to protect you against it.
That includes a firewall, antivirus, cryptic passwords, etc etc.

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]
How Do I Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions? See faq219-2884