Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part A

I am doing a new series of blog posts on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I have learnt doing the infinite skills video training course on the same subject. We are going to start with a bit of history. The first version of what we might regard as this was Exchange 4.0 in 1996 and there were earlier versions but they were for desktops. This was the first server version. Exchange 5.0 ran on NT4 and would integrate with a program called Outlook 97. Exchange 5.5 was a major upgrade and was much more reliable than previous versions. In some places you still see this version still being used. With Exchange 2000 email and network accounts were merged. Exchange 2010 was 64 bit only. Exchange 2013 supports upto 8TB of RAM. There is a standard edition that supports upto 5 mounted databases and an enterprise edition that supports upto 100 mounted databases. Mounted databases are ones that are in use. You can have others that aren't currently in use and also the figure doesn't include the recovery database. If you want a free 180 day fully working evaluation version of Exchange do a search for exchange 2013 evaluation. You need a fast connection to do the download as it's around 30 GB. The file format it uses is NTFS. To install Exchange you need to first prepare your active directory schema which can either be done manually or automatically. Manually is slower but gives you greater control over things like accounts. When you install it at one point if you are running multiple Exchange Server programs you need to install mailbox role and client access role. If running a single instance you only install the mailbox role. I will try and do a 2nd installment in this series later tonight.