Brown University Exchange 2003

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Brown University Exchange 2003

• Molly Baird
• Manager, Windows-Novell Services

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Brown definitions

• CIS Computing and Information services
• Provides central IT services, central helpdesk,
  SMTP email services, file print, DNS,
  networking
• DCC Departmental Computing Coordinator
• Primary IT support person in Administrative and
  Academic departments. Focus on desktop and other
  client-side support issues

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Exchange current statistics

• Mailboxes
• 12,000 mailboxes migrated/added over 12 months
• 83 migrated (95 students migrated)
• Hardware
• Two 2-node clustered Exchange mailbox servers
• Four load-balanced Exchange front-end servers
  (Outlook Web Access, IMAP, POP)
• 250 Gig total storage across both clusters

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Browns central Active Directory
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Exchange internal routing
Server 1
Server 2
Clients
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Two kinds of databases comprise an Exchange
information store
Internet Content Store
MAPI Store

• Stores content available to MAPI clients

• Direct access by IMAP, POP, Outlook Web Access
  clients

On-the-fly conversion of content when accessed by
alternate client
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MAPI Messaging Application Protocol Interface

• 2-way communication with Exchange information
  stores
• Changes in calendar, tasks, contacts, message
  folders
• Communicates with Global Catalog servers to
  retrieve Global Address List (GAL)
• Communicate with free/busy public folder to
  update calendar free/busy time

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Exchange collaboration calendaring

• Shared auto-schedulable conference rooms and
  other resources
• View free/busy time of colleagues
• Configure permissions on calendar folder to
  permit others to see your personal calendar
• Delegate access to manage calendars

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Exchange collaboration public folders

• Public Folders misnomer
• Departmental public folders
• Not replacement for file storage
• Vacation calendars
• Shared vendor contacts
• Shared lists
• Collections of project files

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Exchange collaboration shared IDs

• Old model shared password to access email in
  shared mailbox
• New model managed by group access to shared
  mailbox
• Elimination of shared-password access
• Group access can be managed by DCCs if
  acceptable by shared mailbox sponsor
• CIS not needed to update access to shared mailbox

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Browns central Active Directory
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Exchange SMTP mail routing
Worldwide SMTP servers
Exchange servers
Other departmental Email servers
Brown SMTP servers
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Brown legacy spraying email
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Exchange sizing

• Database size based on SLAs to recover single
  database based on current backup practices
• Many small databases on each Exchange server
• Corruption in single database affects only
• 300 400 faculty/staff --or---
• 500 600 student mailboxes

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Exchange maintenance

• Need for maintenance indicated in server syslogs
• Offline maintenance scheduled as needed
• Test maintenance outcome on test/recovery
  Exchange server

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Exchange recovery

• Exchange is a transactional database
• Database activity logged in transaction logs in
  real-time
• Transactions later committed to database at a
  lower processor priority.
• Single database recovery
• Recover last full backup copy of
• database
• Recovery and replay of successive incremental
  transaction-log backups

online
offline
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Exchange costs

• Permanent Staff costs
• FTE hired for migration and maintenance (me!)
• One-time Costs
• Migration 1 ½ FTE staff split between
  administrative and technical duties for 6 months
• License Microsoft Core Campus CAL required
• License OS and Exchange software 11,000
• HW four front-end servers 30,000
• HW Staff cluster 60,000
• HW Student cluster 60,000
• HW SAN/storage for clusters 70,000
• Provisioning changes coincided with Provisioning
  overhaul
• Total one-time cost 231,000
• Total recurring cost 1 FTE MS Core CAL

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Exchange 2000 2003 upgrade

• Outage of less than 60 minutes across all servers
  over a span of four weeks
• Performed by one full-time staff member
• Additional functionality testing by full-time
  desktop services staff
• Benefits
• improved Outlook Web Access client
• improved recovery options
• increased IIS security

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Exchange growth

• Add new back-end clusters and distribute
  mailboxes across new server(s)
• Increase mailbox quota size

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Exchange what limits growth

• Current database sizes limited by aggressive SLAs
  
• Backup methods arent sufficient for growing
  enterprise data needs
• Eliminating backup to tape component will
  enable faster restores
• why cant I have a 1 Gig mailbox like Gmail?
• Recovery of an entire server of 1-Gig mailboxes
  using todays methods would take a month.

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Exchange _at_ Brown questions?

• Molly_Baird_at_brown.edu
• 401-863-7218
• http//cis.brown.edu/doc/email/