Front-End / Back-End with Exchange 2000 - Questions

[News]

Hello. I would like to implement a Front-End / Back End scenario within our
company and I have some questions:

1. Which server in terms of hardware should be the most powerful? (Front or
Back)
2. I understand you can have one Front-End server and several back-end
servers - Is this true?
3. I would like to confiure email for two groups, pointing to two different
servers (group one = employees, group two = students). Would I bebale to
configure it so that each group has the same domain in their email address?
(e.g. @xyz.com) - How would it look it Active Directory? (I can use Exchange
Enterprise version on both Front and Back End servers)
4. What recommendations would you suggest for the two groups? Ideally, I
would like both groups to be independent, but I understand with Enterprise
edition there is a little more flexibility.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

Mark
bud...@generation.net

[William Lefkovics [MVP]]

1) depends. typically the backend server in my experience, but you have to
be aware of both. If you have 100's of OWA users over SSL you need to
ensure the hardware in the front can handle that also for example.

2) Yes. The front end server gets information from the GC which returns
which backend server a users' mailbox resides.

3) You have many options here. But the desired result is not clear to me.
With Enterprise, you can have multiple information stores and storage groups
which can hold different configurations (like deleted item retention) on a
single server. I suspect employees email would be more important in some
way or have fewer restrictions? I am guessing.

4) There are many possiblities. The backend servers do not require
Enterprise, but the frontend does.

William Lefkovics, MCSE, A+

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