Don,
We are using iSCSI storage. The utilization on our Employee/Instructor mail server is relatively low so I am not entirely concerned with the I/O being an issue even in the virtual environment with the iSCSI. The bigger issue is we already attempted an E2k7 install on W2k8 Server earlier this year and did the requisite schema changes, however we were never able to complete that installation successfully for reasons I do not recall. My only admin right now is backlogged with a handful of other projects for which he is better qualified than for Exchange, as am I which is why we are looking to have an experienced party come in and knock out the installation for us and ensure we don't missing anything in the setup, routing, permissions, etc... Thanks Brad From: Don Ely [mailto:don....@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 1:02 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Re: Exchange Deployment Services 1000 users, single MB server with a CAS in front of it... Easy squeezy... What kind of storage are you hooking the ESX hosts to? What connection method are you using (iSCSI, NFS, or Fiber)? On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Brad Metzler <bmetz...@cu-portland.edu> wrote: Good question. The site is presently 2 Exchange servers, one for employees and instructors, one for students. The Employee/Instructor server is the priority with less than 1000 mailboxes, a mix of users and resource mailboxes for room scheduling. No public folders. The student server has about 5000 mailboxes and is scheduled to be decommissioned in the next 12-18 months to be replaced by an outside service so we have no intention of upgrading it but it would need to continue to exist in the site until is it decommissioned. And my apologies to the ladies on the list, I'm sure you have brilliant recommendations as well, so let's hear them! Brad From: Don Ely [mailto:don....@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:50 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Re: Exchange Deployment Services How many users are we talking about? On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Brad Metzler <bmetz...@cu-portland.edu> wrote: Gentlemen, We are looking to upgrade from E2k3 to E2k7 or possibly even 2010 immediately. I am looking for recommendations on providers, partners, or individuals in the Portland Oregon area that really know their stuff and wouldn't come out here trying to figure it out on site but who could do a complete and competent deployment of at E2k7. Our current servers are physical but we intend to do the new deployments to a virtual environment (VMWare) so I'd prefer people who are familiar with deploying to a virtual environment. Also we are running Antigen on our E2k3 servers and Forefront is by far the cheapest on-board antivir we can get as an academic user for running on E2k7 or 2010, so another preference would be someone who has experience with Forefront as well. What say ye? Any hot talent or reliable companies anyone can speak to out here that know E2k7 with Forefront in a virtual environment? Microsoft's list of providers doesn't really help figure out who actually knows what they're doing. Thanks guys. Brad