Exchange 2003 - The Geek In Me!

[jlbenedict]

Well, for $hits and giggles, I'm playing around with a domain infrastructure on Vmware server. Using from my Action Pack, Windows 2003 Server Standard R2 and Exchange 2003.
Just trying to come up with some ideas that I could implement using Vmware Server. This software is the shizzle!

What are some of the crazy, but realistic infrastructure designs that any of you guys have implemented using Vmware Server?

ForestPrep In Progress....

 

[Brazen]

I've mostly used VMWare Server for testing, such as installing apps and playing with settings to see what they do and testing automated installs.

We have VMWare ESX Server now though and I'm in the process of moving production servers into virtual machines. One of the neat things about ESX is you can create virtual networks. Now I'm wanting to replace our problematic Windows DNS server with a solid BIND dns server. To test the switch, I'll make a clone of on of our production Domain Controllers, put it on it's own autonomous virtual network and test setting it up with a BIND server and a test client, all contained in the virtual network.

 

[stash]

Does the Action Pack come with 2003 Enterprise? With Enterprise, you could do some clustering with Exchange, and play around with more interesting PKI scenarios.

Hmm, I just checked, doesn't look like it. But it does come with SQL 2005, ISA 2004, MOM, LCS, Sharepoint, lots of cool stuff. Depending on what your VM host server is capable of, you could come up with all kinds of interesting scenarios.

Brazen, what kind of problems are you having with MS DNS? BIND will be fine with AD (more work though, and you lose some things), but I'm curious.

 

[TG2]

Action Pack and VMWare Server !!! best combo for geeks out there !

I use it at home as well for (1) Server 2003 Standard and (1) Exchange 2003 Server in VMWare server, running on a nice Xeon box

Best thing is if I ever upgrade the Xeon box (or replace it), I just install VMWare and then point it to the VM's and everythings back up and running.

VM's do my DNS, DHCP, FTP and VPN (as well as OWA, 2 other sites and Exchange)

 

[JDMnAR1]

Well - it is not on VMWare server, but Virtual Server from Microsoft (was before VMWare Server was free ). I have a test domain set up on a Dell PE2550 running Windows Server 2003 R2 as the host OS, and three instances of the same OS running as virtuals. One VM is serving as the DC of my domain, another one has Exchange 2003, and SQL Server 2000 on the third. I use it to test code changes to a DTS package that I have running in production that takes a nightly dump from SAP, ports it in to SQL, and then handles some facets of user account management in AD.

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: stash
Does the Action Pack come with 2003 Enterprise? With Enterprise, you could do some clustering with Exchange, and play around with more interesting PKI scenarios.

Hmm, I just checked, doesn't look like it. But it does come with SQL 2005, ISA 2004, MOM, LCS, Sharepoint, lots of cool stuff. Depending on what your VM host server is capable of, you could come up with all kinds of interesting scenarios.

Brazen, what kind of problems are you having with MS DNS? BIND will be fine with AD (more work though, and you lose some things), but I'm curious.

Does Vmware Server support clustering? A while back, I was using the trial version of 2K3 Enterprise, in conjunction with Vmware's Workstation product, and I kind of had to hack at configuration files to perform some unsupported clustering with Vmware Workstation.

My host server contains 4GB of memory and a HT'd P4, 3.4Ghz..
The Exchange cluster might be something worthy to try.