Anyone here an Exchange 2000 Administrator? Care to give some experiences if you are?

[BAMAVOO]

You know like a typical day/night

Also what did you use to learn the software..Trial and error, books, school or other?

 

[vi edit]

I run an exchange server in my office. I tried to get it up and running on my own, using a sybex Exchange 2000 MCSE book. I got close, very close to setting it up correctly. I could get the web access to send and receive just fine. All users could receive just fine, and could send to domains outside of our own ok, but we couldn't send anything internally to our own domain. I dinked around with that thing for about 48 hours and still couldn't finger out what was wrong with it.

I conceded and called in an exchange consultant to help me out. We wiped out the 2k install, restalled 2k server, set up active directory, and reinstalled exchange. In about 3 hours I had a fully functional exchange server.

It's great. I'd have a mutiny on my hands if I went back to using pop mail accounts now. I've got my users using the calendar, scheduling, and tasks collaborations on a daily basis. I've been told that it's one of the best things they've ever used - the calendar feature in particular.

I've got trend micro scan mail antivirus scanner on there scanning all incoming and out going messages for viruses. It checks for updates every 2 hours and I have been virtually virus free since implementing it.

I also took the risk and implemented outlook web access. It's been invaluable for my traveling users. They can log on from remote locations and have access to all of their folders and the company calendar to update their office hours on the fly. Very cool stuff.

As far as babysitting it. Don't really have to do anything short of jockeying tapes and checking the virus logs every now and then. It's been pretty stable. *knocks on desk*.

Well, well, well worth the investment.

 

[BAMAVOO]

What other things do you do besides administer the server? Did you have active directory running on a 2000 server before this?

 

[vi edit]

It was a fresh box purchased explicitly for the exchange server. I really don't have to do anything to administer the server. I *maybe* spend 20 minutes a day checking up on it. I've only got about 150 users on it though, so it doesn't get hit that hard. My mailboxes take up about 6 gig of disk space.

 

[BAMAVOO]

Ahh..I am getting ready to do Admin stuff too..Maybe as high as 1000 users in 4 locations Active Directory already in place..Moving from a trusted domain to one..Cept the VPN users and China..Think I will have a little more to do than 20 minutes a day

 

[Jugernot]

I admin an Exchange server. Basically in our office a monkey could maintain it everyday! You add a new account, give it group access, set a couple of aliases and you're done. Everybody is the same in our office, they love it!

Jugs

 

[FreshPrince]

E2K is tough to setup when you have FE/BE situations...and it gets confusing if you have no DNS experience. Not to mention upgrading from E5.5. We had a bitch of a time upgrading bc we didn't want to install AD on our existing domain so we installed E2k and AD on a completely new domain and moved it from LAN to DMZ. Then connecting and migrating Account IDs, Distrubution Groups, contacts, Mailboxes, and Public Folders from the old Exchange Directory Service on NT4 domain to new E2K on AD located on the DMZ was a bitch. In addition to this we had to figure out what ports to allow on the firewall to allow OWA...then you worry about how to associating W2K AD IDs with NT4 ACLs LOL! Oh, and there's the LDAP port conflict issue if you're upgrading...hmm wut else? I think that's about it. WHEW! Other than that...admining an exchange server(single or cluster is not that hard.) It all depends if you're responsible for setting up or just admining. Altho...if there's one all important tip I can give ya about E2K is that NEVER mess with permissions on the M: drive. I mean NEVER. I had to learn the hard way and it's no fun :|

Also, if you're in charge to setup/upgrade...think about antivirus/filtering, backup, and disaster recover. Obviously if you're a good admin, you would already have these thing in mind. SPAM will prolly be the biggest issue to deal with when it comes to E2K. I had to learn everything the hard way ... because my company is too cheap to send me to class. If it were up to me, I would definately take one of those bootcamps to get a good idea wut exchange is all about. From your description of your exchange environment...I would definately ask your boss to shell out for a quick 2 day class.

 

[BAMAVOO]

Going through a week of it..Migrating from Lotus R5