Exchange Server

Ah Microsoft licensing... the joys. Will you be using Standard or Enterprise? 2000 or 2003? What do you expect the average, and maximum mailbox size to be?

A basic setup is quite easy to do. Gets complicated when you look at advanced routing and clustering etc.
 
For licenses, you need a license for the Exchange Server it's self and then a Client Access License (CAL) for each user or device that will access the server. User CALs work well if you have users that access the server from more than one piece of hardware. Device CALs are better if you have multiple users sharing hardware eg a call centre which people hot-desk on.

Then you could buy the licenses as "retail" boxes or via one of the licensing schemes. You might then want to choose just the license or the license with Software Assurance which provides upgrade rights for two years from purchase.
 
Otacon said:
Ah Microsoft licensing... the joys. Will you be using Standard or Enterprise? 2000 or 2003? What do you expect the average, and maximum mailbox size to be?

A basic setup is quite easy to do. Gets complicated when you look at advanced routing and clustering etc.

I'd expect by the time comes we'll be on Server 2003..so Exchanger Server 2003 will be the choice. Not entirely sure of the differences between standard and enterprise at the moment (will be looking in to it) but we're quite a small organisation in the scheme of things <100 staff. What really really want to do is simply share calendars, contacts (global address books etc), arrange meetings...all in real-time so to speak; i've tried WorkGroupShare which sadly needs to be synchronised continuously throughout the day to ensure each user has up to date info in Outlook. Not what i want.

Will Exchange give us a lot more over the usual Outlook stuff?

Thanks for the replies so far.
 
The main differences between Standard and Enterprise is that Standard can have only 1 storage group, 1 mailbox store and 1 Public store and is limited to 16GB(75GB With sp2) and it doesn't support clustering of servers.
Enterprise supports 4 storage groups, 5 database stores and 16TB of storage and supports clustering. It is also a lot more expensive.

For 100 users standard will be more than sufficient.

It is relatively easy to set up, but it depends on each organisation. The most time is setting up users and mailboxes, and ensuring you are not relaying mail for spammers :-p


It gives you more than Outlook on its own, as you can share calenders, contacts, send appointments, share email.

Cost wise, the standard server licence is about £750-800 and each CAL is about £75-80 each!

Plus if you haven't got any Windows 2003 server cal's you would need another server license (about £500) and CAL's for windows (about £35 each!)
 
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