The Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 messaging software is the latest release in the Microsoft Unified Communications solution that offers organizations a flexible messaging platform. This discussion focuses on the recent updates to the Microsoft Exchange Advisor tool and the newly launched Unified Communications Advisor tool. The end-to-end solutions engineering team from Reza Rooholamini’s Global Solutions Engineering delivered the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 updates to the Exchange 2010 Advisor tool and launched the Unified Communications tool. Members of that team—Mahmoud Ahmadian, Rizwan Ali, Farrukh Noman, and Akshai Parthassarathy—responsible for the delivery of the Dell Advisor Tools and the Business Ready Configurations are featured guests in this chat.

Technical Community - Background Reading

• Dell TechCenter: Microsoft Exchange
• Dell TechCenter: Microsoft Office Communications Server

Chat Transcript

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	Dell-KongY	Hello David. How have you been?
	Dell-d_glynn	Good Kong.
	Dell-d_glynn	Playing with my new ipod Nano
	Dell-d_glynn	and you?
	Dell-KongY	sweet. Got that for my wife before I picked up my iphone
	Dell-KongY	doing well just waiting for the featured guests in a team room
	Dell-d_glynn	and maybe some customers...
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	Dell-KongY	i hope so :)
	Dell-KongY	hi Eric
	Eric.Z	Hello
	Dell-KongY	we'll wait a bit for hopefully a few more folks to join us
	Dell-KongY	otherwise- Eric you will have the undivided attention of many of Dell's finest engineers :)
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	Dell-KongY	hello ceobroker
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	Dell-KongY	So one of our guests has just joined- Mahmoud is a lead engineer on the E2e team at Dell
	Dell-KongY	Farrukh will be with us shortly
	Dell-KongY	Eric and Ceo- have you deployed Exchange 2010 or Uc in your environments yet?
	M_AHmadian	Hi everyone
	Eric.Z	No 2010 or Uc. Just Exchange 2007, mail only.
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	M_AHmadian	I work with Farrukh and team here at Dell Product Group -solutions Engineering
	Dell-KongY	Well - i guess we're pretty light today :)
	Dell-KongY	Let's get started
	Dell-KongY	Farrukh will be with us shortly
	Dell-KongY	Today- we'll be covering the Exchange Advisor tool with 2010 updates and the Uc Advisor tool
	Dell-KongY	http://advisors.dell.com/advisorweb/advisor.aspx?advisor=b6372fc5-7556-4340-8328-b8a88e2e64b2-001ebc;4&c=us&l=en&cs=g_5
	Dell-KongY	http://advisors.dell.com/advisorweb/advisor.aspx?advisor=79cbac64-08fc-4b3e-9fa4-d51e51cd635e-0077d7;3&c=us&l=en&cs=g_5
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	Dell-KongY	Those are the respective links to the advisor.
	Dell-KongY	Sorry Eric
	Dell-KongY	i forgot to mention- right click on the links otherwise you'll be dropped from chat
	Eric.Z	Ok.
	Dell-KongY	i have been testing with Exchange 2010 on vsphere in my labs -> R710 attached to Eql Ps arrays
	M_AHmadian	On my side we have focused on Exchange 2010 physical
	M_AHmadian	Eql Pv and Emc with 11 G servers
	Eric.Z	I'm always thinking the mailbox servers should go with physical. Not sure if this is right or wrong.
	Dell-KongY	Eric - have you virtualized other applications in your environment?
	Dell-KongY	my experience with Exchange 2k3, 2k7 and 2010 has been that virtualization gives you flexibility as long as you properly size the resources -> Cpu, memory, Disk, and Network
	Eric.Z	I did some in my previous job but not this one because it only covers email. I do have a virtual Bes.
	Eric.Z	And I am thinking to virtualize Ht and Cas servers.
	Dell-KongY	for the Mb server- are you using Exchange's features for Ha and Backup/dr?
	Eric.Z	We are using Scc plus a low end Scr, just in case.
	Eric.Z	For now, I don't have the option of using Vmware. I have to go with Hyper-v. I don't know if I can get much to use virtual Mb
	Dell-KongY	true hyper-v does not permit memory sharing like vsphere does
	M_AHmadian	with E2010, iops have rduced by 70% so Io bottleneck is less of a concern
	Dell-KongY	in my virtualization test environment, i used the advisor tool to help me size the physical instantiation
	Eric.Z	So advisor tools are for the planning, as I thought.
	Dell-KongY	yes- it is more for planning and sizing your Exchange / Uc environment
	Dell-KongY	the Business Ready Configs (brcs) are cookie cutter solutions that you can buy as is to deploy immediately while the Reference Architectures (ras) are baseline configs from where you can start
	Eric.Z	Not free?
	Dell-KongY	All these are free
	Dell-KongY	the advisor tools are free to use at the links that I posted earlier
	Dell-KongY	btw- the chat transcript will be posted tomorrow
	Dell-KongY	so don't worry about taking notes or such
	Dell-KongY	the Brcs are whitepapers with detailed configurations and best practices
	Dell-KongY	the Reference Architectures are 2-page docs with a brief description of what it tries to solve
	Eric.Z	Ok. I thought advisor tool is something like the Caculator we used when planning Exchange 2007 mailbox server. We used it to order and design our Eql disk arrays and Luns.
	Dell-KongY	My understanding is that the tool is more storage centric and more generic
	Dell-KongY	the Exchange Advisor tool goes through engineering rigor with emphasis on the Dell stack
	Dell-KongY	which includes Pe servers, Ps storage arrays, Dell | Emc
	Dell-KongY	Eric- if you don't mind sharing, which company do you work for?
	Eric.Z	A university in Canada. Since the script will be post, sorry for not going more detail.
	Dell-KongY	no worries
	Dell-KongY	thank you for sharing though
	M_AHmadian	are you looking to upgrade to 2010 any time soon?
	Eric.Z	We see there will be a need to have another mailbox server. And I am suggesting to use 2010.
	M_AHmadian	exchange 2010 less demanding in tterms of Iops
	M_AHmadian	with richer Ha features and
	Eric.Z	What kind of experience do you guys have with co-existing 2007 and 2010.
	M_AHmadian	muli-way replication and Dr built in
	M_AHmadian	they can co-exist fine
	M_AHmadian	the catch is that you have to configure and Ht and Cas first then Mb for 2010
	Eric.Z	We are more looking forward to its 3rd-party browser Owa Premium as well as the built-in archive (not perfect now) feature. You know in universities, they are people who do not like Ms but prefer Open Source.
	M_AHmadian	in 2010 Cas is acting as the connection to the mailbox
	M_AHmadian	the clients dor not connect to the Mb
	M_AHmadian	the connect to Cas
	M_AHmadian	yes
	Eric.Z	You won't believe, in many universities, all users are using Outlook Anywhere or Owa. They are using Cas to connect to Mb anyway. Mine too.
	Dell-KongY	that's great feedback Eric
	M_AHmadian	the built in archive Mb is on the same Db so you are right there is room for imporvement
	M_AHmadian	what are you using for archiving currently?
	Eric.Z	No archiving. Was planned but the money was taken back because of the Recession.
	M_AHmadian	bummer!
	Eric.Z	But this made my servers simpler to manage.
	M_AHmadian	with E2010 and Data Availability Groups (dag) , (multiple copies of each database)can be kept current allowing offloading backup jobs to seocndary servers
	Dell-KongY	Gents - thank you for joining us today.
	Dell-KongY	I want to thank Mahmoud, Farrukh, David, and Eric for joining us today
	Eric.Z	You mentioned 2010 is less demanding Iops. Is Dell planning to sell Md1120 with 1TB Sata disks, which will be better fit for E2010?
	Eric.Z	Thanks you Kongy
	Dell-KongY	Eric- if there is any other questions around E2010 or Uc that you have, please send them my way
	M_AHmadian	Yes Md1220 with 2TB Sata and Nl-sas is a good option
	M_AHmadian	now Das with cheaper disks is gaining more potential with Ex2010
	Eric.Z	How soon will they be on market?
	M_AHmadian	Md1200 with 2TB are already out
	M_AHmadian	Internal drives is also becoming more popular with Ex2010
	M_AHmadian	since scaling out in Dag with all Ha features is very good option
	M_AHmadian	we have refernce configurations with 10,000 on internal drives...on servers like R510 which can hold up to 12 drives
	Eric.Z	I more like Md1220 because of 24 drives per array.
	M_AHmadian	2.5" drives still have capacity limitation compared to 3.5"
	Eric.Z	I see. Thank you.
	Eric.Z	Have to go.
	M_AHmadian	you are very welcome
	Eric.Z	Thank you and have a nice day or night.
	M_AHmadian	have a nice day u 2
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	Dell-KongY	take care guys
	Dell-KongY	cya next week
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