Single or multiple Exchange servers?
I am looking for some info on best practice for a global Exchange setup. My company has close to 40 offices in 35+ countries. I work in IT in the US and our group IT Manager is in Europe. Their consultant recommends we use a single Exchange server for the entire group.
We have about 1000 mailboxes.
To me it makes more sense to have regional servers with the mailboxes for the users in that region. I think it should make backups more manageable and local administration easier. Not to mention the importing into Exchange. (using an IMAP/POP solution right now)
I've done some reading on Microsoft best practices for deployment, but can't seem to find anything about this scenario.
Any help would be appreciated.
We have about 1000 mailboxes.
To me it makes more sense to have regional servers with the mailboxes for the users in that region. I think it should make backups more manageable and local administration easier. Not to mention the importing into Exchange. (using an IMAP/POP solution right now)
I've done some reading on Microsoft best practices for deployment, but can't seem to find anything about this scenario.
Any help would be appreciated.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Best practice is to centralize your Exchange servers. This makes the environment easier to manage and allows you to minimize costs. Unless you have a very compelling reason to do so, you shouldn't be installing Exchange servers in branch offices.
Having a single Exchange server is a bad idea. You should have at least two servers in a DAG for redundancy. If you have two sites with good infrastructure and WAN connectivity, you can extend you DAG between site to add additional redundancy at the site level.
-JJ