Exchange Server 2007 Design and Architecture at Microsoft
How the Microsoft Information Technology organization designed the corporate Exchange Server 2007 environment
Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) maintains a complex Microsoft® Exchange Server environment consisting of several geographic locations and multiple Active Directory® forests. There are 16 data centers, four of which host Exchange Mailbox servers, to support more than 515 office locations in 102 countries with 121,000 users, including managers, employees, contractors, business partners, and vendors. Site and server consolidation conducted with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and new deployment features available in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 in combination with proven planning, design, and deployment methodologies enabled Microsoft IT to transition this environment to Exchange Server 2007 in less than eight months. Microsoft IT decommissioned the last Mailbox servers running Exchange Server 2003 in the corporate Active Directory forest shortly after Microsoft released the new Exchange Server release to manufacturing (RTM) version on December 7, 2006.
This technical white paper discusses the Exchange Server 2007 architectures, designs, and technologies that Microsoft IT chose for the corporate environment and the strategies, procedures, successes, and practical experiences that Microsoft IT gained during the planning and design phase. In addition to common planning and design tasks typical for many Exchange Server deployment projects, such as server design, high-availability implementation, and capacity planning, transitioning a complex messaging environment to run on Exchange Server 2007 also entails specific planning considerations regarding directory integration, routing topology, Internet connectivity, client access technologies, and unified messaging (UM).
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Operating a Global Messaging Environment by Using Exchange Server 2007
This white paper is for business decision makers, technical decision makers, and operations managers. It assumes that the reader has a working knowledge of Microsoft Windows Server® 2003, Active Directory, Exchange Server 2007, and Microsoft Operations Manager. Because many of the principles and procedures discussed in this paper are based on standard operations methodologies, a high-level understanding of the MOF, MSF, and ITIL models is also helpful.
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Exchange Server 2007 Deployment Checklists
This technical white paper discusses the deployment checklists that the Exchange Messaging team created based on the Exchange Server 2007 architecture and design specifications for the corporate production environment.
The first two sections briefly reiterate the reasons why the Exchange Messaging team uses checklists, and the sections explain the Microsoft IT server life-cycle management process. These sections also discuss the usefulness of checklists from a decision maker's point of view and highlight the responsibilities of the Exchange Messaging team within the overall Microsoft IT organization.
The third section, "Pre-Installation Deployment Checklists," covers the tasks the Exchange Messaging team performs to prepare servers for later installation of a specific server role. In some cases, a server role requires additional configuration. These tasks are role-specific and are listed in checklist form.
The next sections provide detailed discussions of the various checklists that the Exchange Messaging team created for the individual server roles.
This technical white paper also includes an appendix titled "Deployment Worksheets," which contains a set of worksheet templates that are derived from the Exchange Messaging team checklists. These worksheet templates can serve as a starting point to create custom checklists based on the specific needs of an IT organization.
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