Exchange 2010 Makes You an Expert

Thursday, May 20, 2010
One of the great things about working with Microsoft Exchange is the breadth and depth of knowledge you gain by designing and managing it.  In Exchange 2003, we made you a storage expert.  In Exchange 2007 you became a digital certificates expert.  Now in Exchange 2010 you will become a load balancing expert.

The Client Access Server role in Exchange 2010 has evolved into a true universal connection point for all client access - be it Outlook, MAPI, POP, ActiveSync, or web services clients like Entourage WS Edition.  This abstraction makes load balancing and fault tolerance for CAS servers paramount in any Exchange design where high availabilty is required.

There is no one size fits all solution for load balancing CAS arrays.  You may find that simple Windows Load Balancing will work for you, or you may have a need for bigger (and more expensive) hardware load balancers.  Do your research.  Learn.  Become an expert.

I encourage you to read Exploring Exchange 2010 RPC Client Access Service on the MSExchangeTeam blog.  This article gives an excellent overview of the new RPC Client Access and Address Book services in Exchange 2010.  It also explains many of the details about Client Access arrays.

1 comment:

  1. I totally agree with Exchange 2010 really testing your load balancing skills in particular with different scenarios such as multiple CAS and HUB's. The 2 server fully redundant Exchange 2010 environment only holds true if you are utilizing a hardware NLB.

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