I will disagree on Exchange being fragile. I am not sure how we decided to get Exchange Server 4 for my former employer at that time. This is when I learned to be an NT3.51/NT4 admin. The exchange public/private databases should have been destroyed by me dozens of time. I learned a lot of things that should never be done. I upgraded thru each version until 5.5SP2 (I think SP2 is where I stopped). Only had 1 Exchange server. Played with 2 one time. Moved the public to #2 then after 2 weeks had to move it back to #1. I believe that's where I learn of Don Ely's way of doing a few things :) I am bit more cautious now a days (backups, VMs, test machines, etc.).
Gene Giannamore Abide International Inc. Technical Support 561 1st Street West Sonoma,Ca.95476 (707) 935-1577 Office (707) 935-9387 Fax (707) 766-4185 Cell [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:44 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmond<[email protected]> wrote: > What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount > of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the "more" command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the "M: drive" and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
