Hosted Exchange?

dextor03

Hi, I had a question about hosted exchange and would like to get some views on it. At the moment I'm running a local Exchange 2003 server, spam filter and BES server for our company email. We probably need to upgrade these 3 servers in the near future and also put a proper backup plan in place. We currently use tape backup but it can be slow to restore and may include a number of days without service should something major happen. With the cost of replacing/upgrading the 3 servers and to implement a proper backup plan would it be just as well to go down the hosted exchange route?

If I did go down the hosted exchange route it would cut out the need for an Exchange server, virus & spam filter, BES server and backup. Can anyone recommend a hosted exchange solution? What are the pros and cons to going with such a solution?

Jumpy

What sort of mailbox numbers do you have?

dextor03

40 users at the moment

Jumpy

Then yes, hosted is a good idea.

What sort of internet connection have you?

dextor03

4MB SHDSL

CloudExpert

Hi Dextor:

Many businesses are moving to a Hosted Exchange environment. There are many reason for this but the most important is the maturity of cloud technology, economies of scale drive down costs, functionality is far greater, reliability is guaranteed and believe it or not security. Security includes back-ups, premium spam filters.

Some things you need to consider before moving:

a) Service Level Agreement: What are the terms, this includes up-time
b) How often do back-ups occur
c) Do they support BlackBerry integration (in your case)
d) Migration, do they migrate your data for free or do they not offer migration from current system at all.


These are some of the things that you need to consider. I hope this is helpful. By the way we use CloudWire and we couldn't be happier. The level of functionality and their customer service is unmatched.

rolion

my experiene with so high pitched and used this word "cloud" is so frustrating... is like our national roads...'lots' of motorways for our high power cars !!! driving a bmw750 here and driving it in Germany,where you'll need a flying pilot licence.

cloud is ok if you have a big fat redundant pipes from your office to cloud.
no one says that,all wants you to do the sales and then when slow and offline issues kicks in,they pass you to support while they are enjoying big fat huge commisions taken of your sales.

while locally broadband is 6m/6m (irish broadband/imagine) at a what a costy price...can you get 100m from one end to another !??
i asked in a previous topics few questions to another very happy cloud user and i haven't received an answer even today...

if you want to test your 40 users reaction and your management feelings,disconnect / unmount your exchange server for minutes or hours and then you'll better understand what cloud means to you...and hope that won't generate a "CV reviewing event" in the HR techincal department.

Do not take me wrong,i am a Microsoft and Google Partner but i just can't see it happening soon...with our virtual roads to so highly called cloud !!!
Also,get a quote for a 24x7 virtual server,see how much is going to cost and do the maths...

If your backup and restore of a mail server with 40 mailboxes takes days,then is something fundamentally wrong in there...with you,with servers,with backup,with IT budget.
To prove my theory,i can offer you a free site audit to get the current situation and give the best industry standards reccomandations on how to backup and restore your lovely 40 m/boxes in minutes,possible hours...also,on how to use the exchange from 3 servers in to a single box with real time redundancy,access,disaster recovery,MX backup and offline access for your users.

my advice:stay local !!!
correct me if i'm wrong..

CloudExpert

@Rolion

We use a couple of cloud apps and support has been great in most occasions compared to our in-house IT that took days to respond because of the amount of work they had.The support has always been outstanding they seem to be putting the best people to help their customers. They actually care. Cloud Computing is far more reliable and far more functional than any in-house setup. I know, we use and it works great compared to the in-house server that we had and needed maintenance and manpower to get it going.

Who told you need 100M connection, that's a first. All the guy wants is an email system. Recalculate.

Happening soon? Are you aware how many companies are moving to the Cloud. This is not the future, it's the present my friend.

brianwalshcork

CloudExpert wrote: »

Cloud Computing is far more reliable and far more functional than any in-house setup.

CloudExpert,

This depends entirely on the application, and the connectivity, so you can't make a blanket statement.

I have to agree with Rolion a bit here, cloud apps are fine IF you have good connectivity, (and a suitable app). The user expericene is going to be far worse with a could based app regardless of how much server horsepower / support you have if the internet connections are crap.

This is reminiscent of the 1999/2000 - when companies felt that they had it made as long as they had .com on the end of their name. In 2010 / 2011 , the tendency is to stick everything in the cloud.

Some applications work well in the cloud, maybe yours do. But sticking 40 mailboxes at the other end of a 4 Mb / 4 Mb connection isn't always going to be better - especially since that connection is probably going to be shared with the normal internet traffic aswell.

If it was a small business with 5 users and the same internet connection, then there would be no question about it - hosted exhange all the way. If it was 1000 mailboxes on multiple sites with an exchange cluster, then possibly the same conclusion, but it's not so clear cut in the middle.

It also depends on the mail usage profile. If the users currently send 10 MB attachments to 5 recipients in their office today, next week when they're moved on to the shiny new improved hosted exchange solution, and the same attachment takes 5 mins to reach the other side of the office, they're not going to think it's great.

Of course, if they only ever send small mails, or email external recipients, they won't notice, and they will, one day, appreciate the fact that there mailbox can be recovered!

Brian

dextor03

Thanks for the input guys.

This initially started off as a DR project but some of the quotes that we received were well above our budget. As I said we currently use tape backup but if we had a fire here in the morning we would be in the sh*t. We could survive some downtime with data but it is essential for our business to have a functioning email service. That is why I was looking into the hosted exchange option. It would remove all the hassle and give us peace of mind.

If there is a cheap off site backup alternative for exchange please let me know. I would prefer to stay with the local exchange server but we need to be able to switch over to our backup should something happen with our primary server.

tech

you could use Acronsis to backup your entire exchange server and then restore it to new hardware if required in the event of a Disaster, it costs about 900 odd including Universal restore

rolion

@dextor03

First action for me is to implement some form of MX backup in case my primary server and/or xDSL line goes offline. That is easy to implement and combined with retention of all emails for let's say 30-60-90 days,depending by your ISP quota,that should give you a free backup "just in case".
These two combined should suffice for a basic sweet cost effective DR solution.

If you need further ,deeper solution i can give you assistance but i will need more information from your side.

Regards.

celtic_oz

you could go google apps with an outlook front end

gets rid of the spam/av and dr end..

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync

brianwalshcork

Dextor03,

What sort of disasters are you protecting against, what is the target time that you want to be fully operational within if something bad does happen?
What is the € cost of not being back online withing that time?

When you know the answers to these questions, it'll give an idea of the budget available for DR, and what the best options for achiving your targets are at that price point.

Brian

Boskonay

Basic backup space / storage in the cloud with backup options is very cost effective these days.

'Cloud' is just the current word for 'outsourcing' to a better infrastructure.

It should save money and work as well, if not better than trying to do it yourself.

Static M.e.

@OP

For your needs I would definitely look at a cloud/hosted exchange system. You need to move away from buying hardware as much as you can, with virtualisation (Cloud/call it what you will) you can get a better response, a better backup solution and less worry for you.

You would be a perfect candidate for it.

We use both solutions for different offices/company's we manage.

I think Microsoft still do their own version of a hosted exchange where you pay for a licence fee for each user (I was asked to Trial it once). It also includes Spam filters and has all your email passes through their servers first it doesnt matter if your Internet connection goes down.

The BES Server I dont know if you can outsource that. Perhaps o2 or Vodafone could do it.. I don't know. Its something we are going to look at in a couple of weeks but I haven't done any work on it yet.

SouperComputer

I know its not "really" an answer to your question, but I'd second the suggestion to take a look a google apps and have a chat with them. You can always backup the client email data from the workstations if needs be. Cheapest hosted exchange ive come across was sherweb, $8 or thereabouts per account not incl BES or anything like that. Thier incident & change management not up to scratch however. I would hesitate to reccomend them for a business.

NullZer0

Don't know if this has been mentioned above but Google Apps Premium with BES integration is the way to go ;-)

rolion

open to comments:

http://www.clouditproonline.com/article/cloud-computing2/Cloud-Computing-Confusion.aspx

enjoy it...

ingen

dextor03 wrote: »

Hi, I had a question about hosted exchange and would like to get some views on it. At the moment I'm running a local Exchange 2003 server, spam filter and BES server for our company email. We probably need to upgrade these 3 servers in the near future and also put a proper backup plan in place. We currently use tape backup but it can be slow to restore and may include a number of days without service should something major happen. With the cost of replacing/upgrading the 3 servers and to implement a proper backup plan would it be just as well to go down the hosted exchange route?

If I did go down the hosted exchange route it would cut out the need for an Exchange server, virus & spam filter, BES server and backup. Can anyone recommend a hosted exchange solution? What are the pros and cons to going with such a solution?

i use the exchange hosted service, priced at €25.77 per month per 5 users
also they charge me €10.36per user per month for hosted BES service also.

have had no issues with them, can host multiple domains, easily managed online, you get OWA access too, 24 x 7 support, huge disk data allocation, standard user gets 25gb mailbox size.

why buy from a reseller when you can buy direct from microsoft.

also you benefit, from using microsoft ip addresses which have a good reputation scoring, ( in mail filtering software, spamhaus / spamcop etc)

ingen

Static M.e. wrote: »

@OP

For your needs I would definitely look at a cloud/hosted exchange system. You need to move away from buying hardware as much as you can, with virtualisation (Cloud/call it what you will) you can get a better response, a better backup solution and less worry for you.

You would be a perfect candidate for it.

We use both solutions for different offices/company's we manage.

I think Microsoft still do their own version of a hosted exchange where you pay for a licence fee for each user (I was asked to Trial it once). It also includes Spam filters and has all your email passes through their servers first it doesnt matter if your Internet connection goes down.

The BES Server I dont know if you can outsource that. Perhaps o2 or Vodafone could do it.. I don't know. Its something we are going to look at in a couple of weeks but I haven't done any work on it yet.

microsoft do BES hosting now, and support is excellent, they have a few different policies that you can select to use for the blackberry. they have different regional hosted BES servers, each capable of hosting 5000 or so users.

ingen

dextor03 wrote: »

Hi, I had a question about hosted exchange and would like to get some views on it. At the moment I'm running a local Exchange 2003 server, spam filter and BES server for our company email. We probably need to upgrade these 3 servers in the near future and also put a proper backup plan in place. We currently use tape backup but it can be slow to restore and may include a number of days without service should something major happen. With the cost of replacing/upgrading the 3 servers and to implement a proper backup plan would it be just as well to go down the hosted exchange route?

If I did go down the hosted exchange route it would cut out the need for an Exchange server, virus & spam filter, BES server and backup. Can anyone recommend a hosted exchange solution? What are the pros and cons to going with such a solution?

dextor you can set this up yourself with microsoft, its very easy, they have reduced prices for hosted exchange to €8.52 per user per month for

exchange online
sharepoint online
office livemeeting
office communications online

dextor03

Thanks for all your info on this. We have decided to go with the hosted exchange option but now i need to find a suitable hosting company. Going with Microsoft looks like the best option but I did hear something that would concern me. Is it true that the US can seize any information held on its own territory as part of its patriot act? They can’t do that if it is elsewhere, e.g. Europe. This might cause some problems within our organisation. Any truth in this?

Boskonay

Using a US company means your data falls under the Patriot Act, regardless of it's actual location. This means that even if your data is in Ireland or the UK / EU physically, the Federal Government have access to it and can seize it with moderate cause.

This actually precludes most government departments and agencies in Ireland, for example, from using clouds run by US firms.

You might be better off going with a local option, or talk to an IT company about setting you up something.

longshotvalue

for 40 users, i think the hosted option is too expensive, in comarison to the cost of some new hardware and a proper backup plan. €8 per month per user is going to cost near 4,000 a year, for lets face it slower access.

It would look a better option to me to get 2 smallish esx servers with Veeam Backup and replication and P2V the physical boxes to the new setup. This kind of setup wont cost more that 2 years rental of hosted exchange will be much quicker and have more or less immediate recovery from hardware issues. I would outsource the anti-spam to someone like mx sweep or any of those type of companies.

This solution would be cost effective , have almost no downtime and be very eary to manage.

Boskonay

You could run your own Exchange 2010 server, just in the cloud. You'd be looking at about 400 a year for the server, and 2.50 or so a month a seat (so about 1200 a year for 40 seats). So under 2k a year and you've got full remote access / global access and dont have to worry about the kit, backups, etc.

Mr. Fancypants

Just going back to the offsite backup question. You are using tape, just use set up a decent rotation and retention policy and ensure you move the tapes offsite. Easy peasy and little no extra cost.

brianwalshcork

Boskonay wrote: »

You could run your own Exchange 2010 server, just in the cloud. You'd be looking at about 400 a year for the server, and 2.50 or so a month a seat (so about 1200 a year for 40 seats). So under 2k a year and you've got full remote access / global access and dont have to worry about the kit, backups, etc.

This is a more reasonable suggestion - but still doesn't get around the connection limitations - although a lot of people would be happy with 4MB SHDSL, it's like stepping back 2 decades to a congested 10MBit co-ax network.

Dextor, you mentioned that this was a DR project - what mailbox sizes do you give you users? @ 500 MB each, you're going to have at least a 20 GB exchange backup file depending on how you back up... copying that to a remote site daily isn't going to make you popular... and you're still looking at data loss if your office burns down at an inconvenient time!

I don't think that offsite tape storage is good enough to say that you have a proper DR plan implemented.

Have you considered keeping your local exhange server, upgrading it to 2010, and using the database availability groups?

I have no direct experience of this, but it looks interesting - if there was a cloud provider that provider reasonable DAG hosting that worked out cheaper than a hosted exchange server - then it might be the best of both worlds - a local exchange server and a constant trickle of traffic to an offsite exchange database - although I'm not sure if there is such a thing as DAG hosting as opposed to full exchange hosting!

Brian

Boskonay

Why would connection be an issue if we're just talking about email and cals, etc? Unless you are throwing 10GB attachments around, 4mbps shdsl is pretty much perfect for exchange... ?

rolion

Boskonay wrote: »

Why would connection be an issue if we're just talking about email and cals, etc? Unless you are throwing 10GB attachments around, 4mbps shdsl is pretty much perfect for exchange... ?

a 6MB SDSL 4:1 starts at...€270 per month ... and...you'll need at least two lines...!

cost effective !?? not sure...

brianwalshcork

Boskonay wrote: »

Why would connection be an issue if we're just talking about email and cals, etc? Unless you are throwing 10GB attachments around, 4mbps shdsl is pretty much perfect for exchange... ?

It's not just exchange traffic that's going to be sent / received...it's 40 users worth of user http traffic aswell, and everything else that might be going on.. ..

I'd say it might just about be adequate - if these users weren't already used to having a local exchange server...

I think I mentioned it earlier in the thread - the OP is going to unveil his shiny new bomb proof DR set up and from the users point of veiw it now takes 5 min for him to email that 10 MB powerpoint presentation to his colleague at the other side of the office... from the users point of view things are now worse than before.

Boskonay

But they can now access from anywhere and that's an improvement.

With 4mbps, that's 500KB per second, so that 10mb file will move in under a minute.

Boskonay

As for dag only hosting, shouldnt it be possible to run an exchange server in the cloud just as a passive part of a dag?

brianwalshcork

Boskonay wrote: »

But they can now access from anywhere and that's an improvement.

With 4mbps, that's 500KB per second, so that 10mb file will move in under a minute.

The OP can configure OWA and OMA as he stands if he wants to, to give the users browser and smart phone mail access for no extra cost and fairly little effort.

A 10 MB file gets bloated by 20 - 30 % when it's encoded... 10 now, we're up to 12.5 MB, that has from the senders mail box to the exchnage server and back in again, so the total data to pass through the connection is 25 MB... you're never going to achieve that theoretical maximum speed of 500 KB/s .. what's the best you've seen? 80% 90%? let's say the exchange is right next door and he's getting 85%, so now we're down to 425 KB/s ... (let's ignore the rounding of 1000 bits to 1 KB!)... so under these generous assumptions, you'll the file will tunr around in 60 seconds...

... but that's ignoring all the other traffic on the connection - all other emails that are being sent and received, and alll the other http traffic...

the longer it takes for the recipient to get that power point file the more likely he is to fire up you tube or click whatever link to some hilarious video his mate set him earlier increasing the traffic on the connection and thereby increasing the time it will take to receive the mail.

Sit and stare at the last post on this thread for 60 seconds - it's a long time!

I think you get my point, and I get yours - it would work OK for 40 users on a 4 MB connection, but it would only be OK, and I wouldn't be bringing it up come review time!

brianwalshcork

Boskonay wrote: »

As for dag only hosting, shouldnt it be possible to run an exchange server in the cloud just as a passive part of a dag?

That's what I don't know - it would be technically possible, but would it cost the same price as the figures you gave earlier for a normal hosted exchange, or is there some way of providing a cut down version which would only give the DAG features but no direct user access to the hosted mailboxes.

Boskonay

Hmmm, I would assume you dont need any SALs for an exchange box that just sits as part of the dag? Exchange 2010 Standard Edition supports DAG clustering as long as it is installed on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, so you'll have the cost of enterprise OS.

MS say "all servers in a DAG must have a server license regardless if they have all mailbox databases passive or not".

But it's not clear if you need CALs/SALs on the remote box - my interpretation would be not...

Boskonay

As for the speeds / access issues, it depends entirely on the nature of the use, and the level of internal email (which might be better served with a file sharing solution anyway).

dextor03

It's hard to know what to do. As I said before the local Exchange server has served us well and we get very few complaints from our users about the level of service they receive. I wouldn't want that to change and users start complaining about the time it takes for an email to hit someone in the same office.

We've already increased the line speed from 4mb to 10mb at very little extra cost which is a good start whatever we do. I've also been looking into a service called Mimecast - http://www.mimecast.com which would provide us with virus scanning, spam filtering, backup and email archiving (optional). It's a very good product and might be worth looking into. We could then upgrade our current Exchange 2003 server to 2010 and keep everything in house. We could continue with our tape backup and the backup service they provide would also give us time to get our Exchange server back online should anything happen.

This setup would be ideal for us but I just need to calculate the costs of new hardware, Exchange upgrade and the Mimecast service against the estimated €4,000 per year cost of the hosted exchange option.

I must thank you again for your input on this matter. It’s greatly appreciated.

ednwireland

if you host with an american company, can they be forced to release your data under the patriot act ? ecven if the servers arent in U.S.

Mr. Fancypants

We have a customer who has just gone to mimecast and is happy with it. They use the archiving and journalling features but host their own exchange servers locally. It does require a plugin to be installed in each users outlook though.

Just a note on the microsoft office 365 hosted exchange. Something that isnt that well documented is that by default users will have a second set of credentials they have to use to access their email. The password for these credentials expire every 30 days so it can be a headache for admins with reset passwords and users getting mixed up over what credential to put where.
You can implement single sign on where only your domain credentials are required but it does require a server running server 2008 and active directory federation services 2.0 and a secure certificate installed. More info here : Prepare for single sign on

testicle

Boskonay wrote: »

Hmmm, I would assume you dont need any SALs for an exchange box that just sits as part of the dag? Exchange 2010 Standard Edition supports DAG clustering as long as it is installed on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, so you'll have the cost of enterprise OS.

MS say "all servers in a DAG must have a server license regardless if they have all mailbox databases passive or not".

But it's not clear if you need CALs/SALs on the remote box - my interpretation would be not...

SALs are per user accessing the entire Exchange setup, no matter how many servers you have in it. You'll need Windows licenses for each server though.

Boskonay

Good to know on the licenses then, so a DAG machine in the cloud is just the cost of the infrastructure and Windows Enterprise, so say 1500 a year(ish).

On the patriot act - yes, as long as the provider is a US corp, the act extends globally. (It's why governments/non US corps dont use BPOS, Google, etc, if they have privacy concerns)

Lots of options here tho!

Put the whole shebang into the cloud

1- SAAS option via BPOS, circa 4k per annum

2 -IAAS option, everything in the cloud, circa 2.5k per annum

3 -DAG machine in the cloud, IAAS, circa 1.5k per annum

3 - In house.......

testicle

Boskonay wrote: »

Good to know on the licenses then, so a DAG machine in the cloud is just the cost of the infrastructure and Windows Enterprise, so say 1500 a year(ish).

On the patriot act - yes, as long as the provider is a US corp, the act extends globally. (It's why governments/non US corps dont use BPOS, Google, etc, if they have privacy concerns)

Lots of options here tho!

Put the whole shebang into the cloud

1- SAAS option via BPOS, circa 4k per annum

2 -IAAS option, everything in the cloud, circa 2.5k per annum

3 -DAG machine in the cloud, IAAS, circa 1.5k per annum

3 - In house.......

What do you mean by a DAG machine in the cloud? Do you propose to have it joined to your local Active Directory domain, and have it replicating with another DAG member in his office? That makes zero sense.

Where does the HUB & CAS go?

brianwalshcork

testicle wrote: »

That makes zero sense.

Why not? the OP was looking for disaster recovery options in case of a something catasrophic on site.

Various people on the thread suggested hosting offsite - I think that will be too slow.
Copying the backup off site will saturate the internet connection for a long time.

Some so sort of continuous replication to an offsite location is what's really required, this is provided though DAG in Exchange 2010...

As I mentioned above, I don't have direct experience in this, so I'd be interested to hear why it's such a bad idea!

Boskonay

As Brian said, just put one of the DAG group into the cloud, you'll get continuous replication of your DB's which fulfills the DR options the OP wanted.

You can also have a 'backup' or failover CAS, etc, offsite too, but it depends what level of failover the OP wants.

mocata

We run SBS 2003 with 18 exchange users, roughly 500gig of user files. I bought 2 identical dell servers, both with RAID 1. I do an incremental backup every night of the mailboxes and users folders to a NAS. The second server is in a fireproof safe 30m away from main building, i clone the main server to it with a USB hd any time there are any major software changes, and also copy files from the NAS to it once a week.

Anyone see any flaws or potential improvements i could make to this system?

rolion

mocata wrote: »

We run SBS 2003 with 18 exchange users, roughly 500gig of user files. I bought 2 identical dell servers, both with RAID 1. I do an incremental backup every night of the mailboxes and users folders to a NAS. The second server is in a fireproof safe 30m away from main building, i clone the main server to it with a USB hd any time there are any major software changes, and also copy files from the NAS to it once a week.

Anyone see any flaws or potential improvements i could make to this system?

Dunno...how i test my systems ?
in a rainy week-end,i unplug the net cable from mail server and push the panic button...then,"play" with the backup and DR systems..

in your case,see if your boot controller is supported by cloning/uncloning software ,then see how long takes to do a 500g / 18u database restore !

good luck...

Mr. Fancypants

mocata wrote: »

We run SBS 2003 with 18 exchange users, roughly 500gig of user files. I bought 2 identical dell servers, both with RAID 1. I do an incremental backup every night of the mailboxes and users folders to a NAS. The second server is in a fireproof safe 30m away from main building, i clone the main server to it with a USB hd any time there are any major software changes, and also copy files from the NAS to it once a week.

Anyone see any flaws or potential improvements i could make to this system?

I'd be inclined to have a backup to tape or similar there also from your NAS box. If there was a disaster on a Thursday (assuming you do your file copy on the Friday) which brought the SBS and NAS box down you would be going back a week to get your data.
Having the spare server is a handy if somewhat expensive fall back solution.
Software such as Backup Exec System Recovery can make an image level backup of your server and do a bare metal restore so you can restore it to dissimilar hardware/virtual environment. It has an option to do a copy to secondary location such as an ftp server too which is quite handy.

Only other thing i can think of is to make sure you fully test your procedure. Hook up the spare server and an existing pc onto a test network and make sure the restore works fully.

mocata

I use clonezilla to copy the server, buying the same hardware worked out cheaper than some of the universal restore options i looked at. Meant as well that there were no potential RAID mismatches or driver snags, one less thing to worry about. The NAS is actually in the fireproof safe as well(linked to main network), forgot to mention. I didnt put the backup server onto the network in case it caused a snafu with the main SBS box.

Thats a good suggestion about a random test some weekend, no point finding out something doesnt work when its too late.