Adam1V Posted May 25, 2011 Author Share Posted May 25, 2011 SC, Have spoken some more WRT the intentions of the exchange servers. Exchange Server at head office will normally collect all mail and distribute to remote offices. This is done by the head office being the first MX record. If the VPN/Broadband link fails then the remote exchange server will use the second MX record which will be a direct web download, thus remote users will not be affected by this outage. The cost of this is ?1000 for the exchange server software. Also, WRT to collecting email, im told there wouldnt be any difference in bandwidth with the users collecting via outlook anywhere over the internet to our server as opposed to over the hardware VPN link. Any thoughts / comments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted May 25, 2011 Veteran Share Posted May 25, 2011 I have replied in your other thread. Give me your wants and needs, I will propose a solution to you. Also if you qualify for special discounts (like government or non profit) this may make pricing different. I will build you a network with visio to take to you existing team and I will try to show mail routing. BTW, you would have to buy a server license per server you want to install exchange on. 1000x however many servers you want to have exchange on. If I remember right you want 3 minimum so that would be 3000. That does not include any additional client access licenses that you would need to purchase. amazon uk lists exchange 2010 for 1200. Virtualization would be the only way you could get away with 1 physical server at each location, you would still need 2 windows licenses (one for AD and one for exchange). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon2611 Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 . As we?re a small company, we cannot afford to buy big expensive servers, virtualisation etc, its simply not affordable for us. Depends on what you want to virtulise, It's the software licences that push up the costs quite a bit. The actuall hardware itself is pretty cheap thesedays can get a dual cpu server with multiple drives and 26 - 32GB ram for well under ?2000 thesedays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam1V Posted May 25, 2011 Author Share Posted May 25, 2011 Thanks SC. Heres the plan. Head Office Head Office Server with exchange server 2010, also the PDC. Second Server at Headoffice purely for file storage / sharepoint 2010. 25~ users at head office, Approx 20 with desktops, 5 with laptops, occasionally work from home/away. Hardware VPN between routers. Remote Office 1 Sever with basic active directory config (i.e local users log into this machine). Approx 5 users with laptops, requiring file/email access from servers above. Number of users will likely increase to 10 by the end of the year. Hardware VPN between routers. Remote Office 2 Sever with basic active directory config (i.e local users log into this machine). Approx 3 users with laptops, requiring file/email access from servers above. Number of users will likely increase to 5 by the end of the year. Hardware VPN between routers. In terms of the solution provided, I will need some good hard facts of why this solution is better. Im being told that that from a failover point of view, if the head office fails, the remote sites would still carry on with reference to my comments above (which in my mind they would carry on with email access etc). Im also told that with the exchange servers talking to each other, only 1 email would be sent between exchanges if its sent to 20 recieptants, and then once it reaches head office, would be sent out to the 20 recieptants. In terms of bandwidth, is there any difference between 10 users collecting emails over the hardware VPN and simply using the internet? If its all going up the same phone line, what is the difference? The above is all questions I need answers for ideally... Thanks again :) Dragon, is that amount of RAM really required? The head office server spec so far (not purchased) Dell PowerEdge T710 Tower Server Intel Xeon X5670 Processor (2.93GHz, 6C, 12M Cache, 6.40 GT/s QPI, 95W TDP, Turbo, HT),DDR3-1333MHz 16GB Memory for 1CPU (4x4GB Dual Rank RDIMMs) 1333MHz 4x 1TB SATA 7.2k 3.5" HD Hot Plug PERC H700 Integrated RAID Controller, 512MB Cache Non-Redundant Power Supply (1 PSU) 1100W (may consider a redundant) Windows Server 2008 R2, Standard Edition, Includes 5 CALS, English, 64 Bit 8x 5 Client Licenses for Microsoft SCE 2010 RAID 10 single container (4 HDDs) ?3200 I think thats a good price and im aware the software is always the worst part :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted May 25, 2011 Veteran Share Posted May 25, 2011 So you want true failover and the costs associated with true failover? True failover requires enterprise licensing, that jumps the cost from 1000 to 5000 per exchange server license. True failover You don't have the bandwidth for this scenerio. 10MB up/down would be the minimum and that is just for the exchange environment. All other traffic would have to be on another network segment. In this scenerio, the site goes down, catches fire, etc, the db is intact at a remote location/another server. This is very chatty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 When the users use VPN, they find the internet incredibly slow (which is understandable), but I was wondering what common practise would be for remote offices etc. One quick fix is to disable "Use default gateway on remote network" as checked in TCP/IP for the VPN connection properties. This will route all internet traffic out their WAN, but keep the VPN server traffic over the VPN tunnel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam1V Posted May 25, 2011 Author Share Posted May 25, 2011 So you want true failover and the costs associated with true failover? True failover requires enterprise licensing, that jumps the cost from 1000 to 5000 per exchange server license. True failover You don't have the bandwidth for this scenerio. 10MB up/down would be the minimum and that is just for the exchange environment. All other traffic would have to be on another network segment. In this scenerio, the site goes down, catches fire, etc, the db is intact at a remote location/another server. This is very chatty. I dont think its true failover in that sense, more of a re-direction of emails for the remote users and allows them to carry on using their exchange whilst theres an issue at head office. (this is whats being proposed). One quick fix is to disable "Use default gateway on remote network" as checked in TCP/IP for the VPN connection properties. This will route all internet traffic out their WAN, but keep the VPN server traffic over the VPN tunnel. I've recently found this little option and since unticked it. It has made a difference, however I have still found at home, that its using the remote network for DNS. At work, I use OpenDNS and prohibit all adult content. Ive im VPN'ed in, view an adult site (with the "Use default gateway on remote network" unticked), I get the OpenDNS blocked page. very odd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted May 25, 2011 Veteran Share Posted May 25, 2011 shoot me your email. I think I am done with mail flow. Are you in the UK? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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