Generic Exchange 2007 Deployment Thoughts

I was recently asked to review a 2007 deployment plan, and the high-level feedback I had was so darn standard, I figured I'd post it. The deployment was 2 CCR clusters, 4hub transports, 4 CAS, 1 Edge and 1 SCR target. The CAS and HUB servers were to run on VMWare. There was also a 3rd party SMTP gateway.

I would definitely recommend SCR, but write and test your failover powershell scripts/commands before you need to use them. As you also probably already know, virtualized exchange servers are not supported by Microsoft, but that does not mean it can’t work. Remember with CCR and SCR DB paths have to be IDENTICAL, so remember to use mount points, not drive letters. Also, don’t use the same DB/SG names on your separate CCR clusters if they are going to target back to a single SCR box (the file paths then become identical). Have a look at pfmigrate.wsf to help with public folders if you need it.

Another question to ask is, do you really need edge if you have a 3rd party SMTP gateway. If you have something like postini or frontbridge, you might be fine with routing inbound mail right to a hub transport server from the SMTP gateway.

For your cas/hub, you can run them both on the same machine as long as you don’t plan on using NLB, so you may not need vmware if that works for you.

My favorite site is msexchangeteam.com, but again, I’m sure you’ve seen it. If not, read up on their info on CAS certificates, very different requirements on 2007 than 2003 FE servers.