Originally posted by: TonyPearson
Continuing this week's theme on Enterprise Applications, I thought that since I mentioned Lotus Notes in my discussion ofSAP yesterday, that I would cover Microsoft Exchange today.
IBM and Microsoft is the ultimate example of "Coopetition". Both companies develop popular operating systems. Microsoft's "Xbox 360" gaming console uses IBM processors. Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino are the Coke-and-Pepsi dominant players in the email marketplace, with Microsoft slightly in the lead, as seen on this graph[Lotus Notes/Domino marketshare growing] from fellow IBM Lotus blogger Alan Lepofsky.And now, Microsoft is getting serious about participating in the storage software business, with its strong support for iSCSI and its SharePoint product. For this post, I will focus just on email.
For those not familiar with both Microsoft and IBM products, I offer the simple cheat-sheet below:
Microsoft Outlook (client)::IBM Lotus Notes (client)
Microsoft Exchange (server)::IBM Lotus Domino (server)
- Server/Storage Considerations
Email has become the primary collaboration tool for most businesses, raising it to the level of "mission-critical".Microsoft has introduced its new Exchange 2007 to replace the existing Exchange 2003. Here are the key differences:
| Exchange 2003 | Exchange 2007 |
| Windows 2000 or 2003 | Windows 2003 |
| Runs on 32-bit x86 | Requires 64-bit EM64T or AMD64, but Itanium IA64 not supported |
| Two(2) server roles | Five(5) server roles |
| Edge Server Role for combating SPAM |
| Unified Messaging services to combine voicemail, email, fax |
| 5 storage groups | 50 storage groups per server on Enterprise edition |
| 5 databases | 50 databases per server on Enterprise edition (max 5 per storage group) |
| NAS or NTFS-formatted block disk | NTFS-formatted block disk recommended |
Obviously, Exchange only runs on Windows operating system. The change from 32-bit to 64-bit means that many Exchange 2003 customers have not yet migrated over, and perhapsnow is a good time to point out alternative email servers on more reliable operating system platforms.For example, in addition to Windows 2003, Lotus Domino runs on IBM AIX, Linux on x86, Linux on System z, Sun Solaris, i5/OS on System i, and z/OS.
Another Linux alternative to Microsoft Exchange is Bynari InsightServer, which allows you to use your existing Windows-based Microsoft Outlook clients, swapping out only the server. This approach can be used when consolidating Windows servers to Linux virtual images on System z mainframe.Linux desktops can run [Ximian Evolution] to attach to either Bynari server, or Windows-based Microsoft Exchange server.Linux Journal offers a few articles on this:[Understanding and Replacing Microsoft Exchange, andExchange Functionality for Linux].
As with [Exchange 2003 editions], the new Exchange 2007 comes in both ["Standard" and "Enterprise" editions]. With all the newroles supported, you now can limit your "Mailbox Storage Server" role as Enterprise, and have the other roles, likeEdge and Hub, as simply "Standard" instead. Enterprise is about 5x more expensive than Standard, so that can makea difference.With Exchange 2003, the big difference was that "Standard" supported only 16GB, versus 16TB with "Enterprise",making "Standard" impractical for all but the smallest company. In the new Exchange 2007, both Standard and Enterprise support 16TB.
Exchange 2007 is also less IOPS-intensive. Thanks to 64-bit addressing, it generates about 75 percent fewer IOPS than Exchange 2003 for comparable configurations. This is good becauseaccording to a 2006 Radicati Group survey, the average corporate employee gets 84 emails per day, averaging 10MBdaily ingestion, and this is expected to grow to 15.8MB daily ingestion by 2008. The number of mailboxes worldwideis growing at a rate of 16 percent per year.
IBM System Storage is a Microsoft Gold certified partner, and participates in Microsoft's Exchange Solution Reviewed Program [ESRP].Both IBM DS8000 and DS4000 series are certified under this program, using a testbed called Jetstress.Those considering IBM System Storage N series can use Exchange 2007 with NTFS-formatted LUNs via FCP or iSCSIattachment.
- Backup and Business Continuity
Back in 2003, the Meta Group found that 80 percent of organizations surveyed felt access to email was more importantthan telephone service, and that 74 percent believed being without email would present a greater hardship thanlosing telephone service. These percentages are probably higher today, with websiteslike ["Crackberry.com"] to cater to those addicted to theirRIM Blackberry hand-held devices.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager can provide backup and recovery support for Microsoft Exchange.TSM for Mail supports both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. TSM for Copy Services can use MicrosoftVolume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interfaces. I blogged about this before, back in June[Exchange 2003 VSS Snapshot Backup Whitepaper], and now there TSM has support for Exchange 2007 as well.
Interestingly, Exchange 2007 has some built-in"Business Continuity" features. Of the ones below, Standard edition has LCR only, Enterprise edition gives you the full set.
- Local Continuous Replication (LCR):In this approach, a single server ships update logs from the active storage group on one disk system over to a passivecopy on a secondary disk system, presumably within 10km FCP distance. These logs can then be forward-applied to thepassive copy. This is sometimes called "database shadowing".
- Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR):This is based on two servers in an active/passive MSCS cluster. First server is attached to the primary disk system,and ships logs to the passive copy attached to the second server.
- Standby Continuous Replication (SCR):For the MSCS cluster-averse customer, SCR is based on two independent servers that are in two locations. In the event of failure on thefirst, scripts can be run to switch over to the second server. Each server has its own disk system.
- Single Copy Clusters (SCC):This is for customers who have existing systems, but not recommended for new customers. An MSCS cluster, where both active andpassive servers are connected to the same single disk system. The disk array can be a single point of failure (SPOF) in this environment.You could mitigate risks by using IBM's disk mirroring in this situation, but then you are left coordinating those copies with new servers at the remote location.
- Archive Support
It is estimated that as much as 75 percent of a company's intellectual property (IP) can be found somewhere in their email repository. Email is often requested in lawsuits and regulatory investigations. According to the Workplaceemail IM & blogging 2006 survey by AMA and the ePolicy Institute, 24 percent of organizations have be subpoenaed by courts and regulators, and another 15 percent have gone to court in lawsuits triggered by employee emails.
New regulations now mandate that emails are archived, protected against tampering and unauthorized access, and kept for a specific amount of time, or until certain conditions are met. According to a 2004 CSI and FBI Computer Crime and Security survey, 78 percent of organizations were hit by viruses (the rest must have been running Linux, AIX, i5/OS or z/OS!)and 37 percent reported unauthorized access to confidential information.
IBM offers software to archive emails. IBM CommonStore software supports both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino.For SMB customers, we made things easier with the [IBM CommonStore eMail Archiving Preload Solution], an appliance which I mentioned in [Day 2 Storage Symposium].
- What's Next
According to Gartner, over 60 million people will be doing some form of telecommuting, so access Microsoft hasbeen working on extending the reach of email beyond Outlook client. There is now "Outlook Web Access" thatprovides browser-based access, "Outlook Mobile" to provide text access from cellular phones, and even "Outlook Voice Access" which allows you to listen to your emails from any phone. These are all part of the new Unified MessagingServices feature.
Microsoft is also teaming up with SAP, with a new offering called Duet. See the [SAP and Microsoft Introduce Duet] press release for more details.
It might be a while before all these are commonly deployed, but at least it is something to look forward to!
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