Well, speaking from personal experience, Exchange 2000 is a fairly serious
undertaking, and unless you are looking for the advanced features of
exchange (group calendering, scheduling, collaborative applications etc),
the licensing is probably going to be the main killer unless the university
has some sort of volume / select licensing with Microsoft.
The OWA front end to E2k is pretty sexy, and is almost a full replacement
for the "fat" Outlook client. However, from what I know of other university
environments, you would be looking to really supply the students with the
ability to have an email address, send and receive mail, and ummm that's
probably it really. You wouldn't be using a lot of the features that make
it worthwhile to use E2k, and there are the AD requirements.
There are certainly a number of free-ish / low cost POP3 / IMAP mail servers
for Windows NT / 2000 that would probably provide the features you are after
without going to *boo hiss* Linux :P
If you are using the extra features of exchange and do require E2k, then the
switch should be relatively easy (make sure that you have a VERY stable AD
system inplace beforehand). However if you are just using exchange as a POP3
/ IMAP server, then there are alternatives on the Windows platform without
jumping to Linux (or even worse, Group(un)wise on Novell)
Some "issues" encountered with moving to E2k (from a 5.5 environment) - in
no particular order
Exchange 2k CANNOT run without a stable AD infrastructure - get that
right first
If you are using OWA on 5.5 heavily, E2k OWA is VERY different (could
present a training issue)
Migration from 5.5 to E2k CAN be painful (depending on your existing
config). Many tools around to assist you, however can be costly if the
out-of-the-box tools (Exchange migration wizard) doesn't do exactly what you
want
You are not just migrating 5.5 to E2k, you are also migrating Windows NT
v4.0 to Windows 2000 (much bigger undertaking)
Windows NT v4.0 DNS is quite lightweight, Windows 2000 DNS is a much
different beast. Integrating with BIND DNS etc can be a challenge.
Avoid E2k Clusters if you can, there are a number of scalability issues
around Active / Active clusters
That's about all I can think of atm.
HTH.
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Exchange Discussions" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2002 7:08 AM
Subject: TO ALL WHO HAVE IMPLEMENTED E2K
> mmaxx (MIS) May 17, 2002
> TO ALL WHO HAVE IMPLEMENTED E2K:
>
> Will anybody pls. SHARE their defining moment of triumph, frustrations,
GOTCHAS, regrets etc. etc. in implementing Exchange 2000. I just want to
give an "unbiased" presentation to my boss before he go ahead and buy
GroupWise or worse use LINUX mail, or String & Cans for our 5,500 user
university campus...
>
> Here's our current config:
> 3 Red Hat servers running external DNS and SMTP
> 1 BIND on NT 4.0 for internal DNS
> 13 Netware 5.1 servers running file and print services
> 3 SQL 7 servers on NT 4.0
> 2 Exchange 5.5 servers on NT 4.0
> 6 servers for misc Apps, DC, web servers on NT 4.0
> 1 OWA on Win2K
>
> I know, I Know... this is not probably an optimum mix due to a lot of
bandaging around here...we have to make do with whatever $$ trickles down
from the treasury...and it's too late for us to be mastering Linux...
>
> And yeah, we agree that we need to have a consistent platform and we are
at the crossroad whether we ditch all our Novell servers and take the plunge
with Uncle BillG or ....
>
>
>
>
>
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