Guidance on Active Directory design for Exchange Server 2007

posted by  nicolas.blank (99)  16 months ago (msexchangeteam.com)

GREAT post from the Exchange team. Here's some detail:

This post focuses on two aspects of Active Directory (AD) design for Exchange 2007:

* The recommended ratio of Exchange 2007 servers to Active Directory global catalog (GC) servers
* When to use dedicated Active Directory sites for your Exchange 2007 servers

While most of the existing guidance about AD design for Exchange 2003 applies to Exchange 2007, there are several new factors that must be considered:

* Exchange 2007's new 64-bit architecture
* Availability and mix of both 32-bit and 64-bit AD servers
* New (or upgraded) services and clients (Unified Messaging, anti-virus/anti-spam, Outlook 2007, etc.)
* New role separation and architecture for Exchange 2007 servers (Mailbox, Hub, Client Access Server, Edge, UM.)
* More use of advanced features by typical users (mobile devices, calendaring, etc.)
* Increasing average mail traffic and storage allowances
* Additional message handling (anti-spam/antivirus, compliance features) requires more GC network bandwidth and processor utilization per user/message