[WinMac] Re: Email Choices

Daniel L. Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Tue, 23 Mar 1999 08:56:32 -0500

        Dear Grant,

        Tim brought up a good point about Exchange not being for the
faint-of-heart; but for putting a whole enterprise together then it may
still be worth looking at. Usually, I recommend starting to look at it with
about 50 users, and considering it with about 100 users.

        A key question to deploying Exchange is whether a company has an inhouse
computer staff, as opposed to "someone who runs the server." In fact, your
newspaper employer has several people who are in full time computer
support, so that maintaining an Exchange server is not dependant on any one
person.

        With Exchange, you DO get a pretty capable system: The hard part is
setting it up. Plus, the NNTP service isn't too good - I disable Newsfeed
globally on Exchange servers. And you'll need to run ESEUTIL.EXE (formerly
EDBUTIL.EXE) at least weekly to maintain the databases.

        These factors are the root of my limiting deploying Exchange Server to
enterprises that have a full time MIS staff.

        But, what do you get in return for all this hassle?... After all, you can
scale up Eudora Internet Mail Server (EIMS) to handle 200 users.

        Basically, you get built-in redundancy. Exchange brings in the mail
traffic and records it in one set of files; then "unwinds" these files into
the appropriate user mailboxes. This differs from smaller eMail servers
that pull in and distribute eMail traffic in one fell swoop. It works
nicely, but in the event of a crash it's easy to lose messages - Especially
recent messages.

        An often overlooked factor in deploying an Exchange server is the disk
subsystem, and the "automatic" optimizer. You'll need a pair of SCSI hard
drives on one bus, and your tape drive backup on another SCSI bus.
Basically, you want to put your DSA and MDB files on separate spindles (not
just different partitions) so that your SCSI controller can "stack" the
read and write commands.

 --------------

        One overriding positive factor to deploying Exchange at your newspaper is
that you are in school getting your MCSE - I assume your employer is paying
part of the tab. They should get a return on their investment in your
education! Conversely, if you were going for the CNE certificate, then a
Novell eMail system would be in order. And if you were learning unix, then
a Linux server would be in order.

        However, I kind of agree with your Novell jock about ASIP 6.x [and OS-X],
but for another reason: The lack of robust hardware. The Mac evangelists
will be screaming and jumping up & down, but there is NO COMPARISON between
a toy plastic blue & white Mac and a ProLiant. Say what you want about x86,
but the commercial servers from IBM and Compaq ARE rugged and reliable...
Something that Apple's industrial design staff seems to have overlooked to
produce a "cool looking" package. [I say this as I'm looking at my IBM
IntelliStation Z Pro workstation and making a mental comparison to the guts
of a blue & white G3 Mac...]

        Yours truly,
        Dan Schwartz

 --------------

At 12:23 AM 3/23/99 -0600, Grant Ball wrote:
>Well Dan,
>I'm tickling my keyboard and need help in choosing an email server/software
>solution. I work at a newspaper as well as going to school to get my MCSE.
>Four hours at the paper and five hours at school.
>
>The paper has 200 users split 50/50 between PC's and macs. Novell and PC's
>are on the business side and editorial, classified and production use macs.
>Currently only about 80 of them have email and I was asked about bringing
>the rest on board. We have several AppleShare servers, one of which handles
>email for PC's and macs, as well as an FTP site. The server is an 8500/200
>with 64 megs of RAM.
>
>The fellow I work with is a CNE and when he heard the request, instantly
>went into a rant about how unstable macs and IP6 is for email and that NT
>and Exchange would be a better solution. I don't really care about which to
>use since using Exchange would be cool for me since I'm still a newbe to the
>NT world and this would give me a chance to use some of my new knowledge.
>
>Now, the rub is money (isn't it always.) We already have NT and Exchange and
>we build PC hardware (all Intel stuff so it's HCL compliant) in house. The
>catch is, we only have 25 CAL's for Exchange and the paper doesn't want to
>spend any money if at all possible. My thinking is IP6 and email seem to
>work well, how about just adding the users and Bob's your uncle. Am I
>sailing into disaster thinking I can do this? Should I also consider adding
>more RAM to the server? Should I tell the paper to go the NT route and suck
>up whatever costs that that will incur? What are your thoughts?
>
>Thanks in advance
>Grant
>
> A Macuser for more years than I care to remember and
>an MCP.

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