Once you have selected your Exchange Hosting provider, give some time on analyzing your hardware desing, though this part is done by your hoster. One of the key design elements which ultimately can improve the efficiency of Exchange is by isolating the Exchange database and the Exchange logs onto a different hard drive volume. This is because logs does write operation & databases read mostly. Hence separating these elements onto different volumes increases server performance substantially. This best practise should be followed even in smallest Exchange server implementations.Below figures shows some examples of how the database and log volumes can be configured.
On Server1, the OS and logs are located on the same mirrored C:\ volume and the data base is located on a separate RAID-5 drive set, although in a different channel. OS partition is cornerstone, doing many type of operations and consume more processing power. Putting Exchange logs along with it is not a good idea. Read More here
Exchange hosting providers are now offering hosting services based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 to its customers. Most of the customers have been waiting for SP1 before considering a complete move to Exchange 2007 from its previous versions (Exchange 2000/2003).
So what does the customer get as new features? Isn’t it the same old email, outlook web access, and mobile messaging? What else?
More or less the same as far as the basic user is concerned - the same old email, calendar, outlook web access but with a greater level of user experience. To those who run the business rather, IT managers, I would particularly highlight those features in terms of Disaster Recovery, Security and other aspects which could improve business functions. We will get into these new features & enhancements now. Read more
First of all, don’t confuse with the wording between “Exchange Hosting” and “Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services“. In a previous post, I have written service offering from MS Exchange hosted services, you can read it here.
In this post, I would like to show the cream of service benefits from MS Exchange Hosted Services (EHS). This offering from Microsoft is to help its customers in meeting complex e-mail compliance requirements, which includes hosted services for e-mail filtering, encryption, archiving and recovery. These key services really help the organization to communicate with minimum risk.Read more here
Del.icio.us : EHS, Microsoft_Exchange_Hosted_Services
Most of the organizations, no matter how large they are, moderate size or SMBs understand the value of achieving effectiveness in parallel with saving dollars. This could be easy to say or put this into white paper as a best practice for business models to follow; how to get there is actually challenging as it takes enormous energy and effort to implement this with proper plan. Where to begin? Most of them starts from their network infrastructure. Read more here
Good news for digwin as the new year started. I noticed Google Analytics that digwin now crossed 100K pageviews with 65K unique visitors during the last month. Here is alexa details..
We have more ideas lined up to make the user interface more friendly and useful for Microsoft communities.
digWin.com is a media which discovers Microsoft news and views with the help of its users & bloggers. I have noticed that more bloggers are now using digwin to promote their Microsoft related blogs (stories). They get more focused readers using this site. Some of the tools are here which helps digwin users to post stories easily.
To make use of digwin better, I suggest you read the below tips or visit here
What is digWin? digWin is a community news/discussion site on Microsoft Technologies. At digWin users own the editorial control. Users do it by Voting up the stories they like.
How do users promote stories and/or submissions to homepage?
Users give their VOTE to the postings they like. The number of Votes’s received by the submission gives an indication of “hotness” of the story. All of the content on digWin is from users. Submissions can be interesting links/news on Microsoft Technologies or Technical queries posted for assistance. So, if you like a story or the posting was helpful to you, give a “VOTE” to it and help others get the story. Hot stories are always on the home page.
Remember the following:
- Hot displays the latest hot news.
- New displays you the latest postings.
What type of stories can I submit?
Almost anything on the web that relates to Microsoft Technologies can be submitted. We want digWin to be the source for everything that’s new on the web that interests Microsoft Tech Community.
How to get my submissions noticed?
For News Links, we suggest you have a catching title and a brief description attracting interests.
For Microsoft related discussions, You must have brief and simple Title, Description and necessary web links.
How to rate comments submitted by users?
Click Up for the comments you like and you can click down for the comments you dislike. By clicking down a comment you can cause the comment to be hidden.
How are “digWinners” ranked?
When a particular item is promoted, the user who posted is recognized; this is part of editorial karma sorting system.
In the same way that popular submissions are promoted to the top, the individuals who post them get increases in karma e.g. Scott (100) indicates user Scott has 100 karma points. Every digWinner affects one another’s karma in the same way, irrespective of his/her karma.
How do I accumulate karma?
The Formula is to make good submissions continuously and constantly and this considered the easiest and most effective way. Submissions will be popular if those are wanted and read by other people. In other words, those DigWinner who best understand and foresee what people want to be reading and will apparently be the best rewarded.
Why should I try to accumulate karma?
If you haven’t done already, its worth reading Karma’s definition
Karma in digWin is established in such a way that you will be rated among your fellow DigWinners in order to obtain the distinctive rights.
Can anyone submit?
You can submit if you are registered. Submissions are the nerve center activity of digWin system; it works at its best when people contribute submissions to it. Your Karma increases when making contributions supposed to be valuable by your fellow digWin and will subsequently heighten your rank.
Who made digWin?
You have made it, if you’ve participated in digWin. As a side note, this site is brought to you by the MessagingTalk.org team.
What new features are planned to be implemented? How can I get involved in this process?
The digWin team responds to the needs of the community as best as we can. Do send us your suggestions as we’re always looking for more ideas.
How to submit other questions, comments, or suggestions related digWin.com?
We would be glad to hear from you. Use our feedback form or contact us at feedback@digWin.com
digWin was initially launched 6 months ago with a basic interface and features. After observation from the ground and feedback from the community, we deicded to expand our reach in Microsoft community from Messaging to other areas such as Windows Servers, Unified Communications, SQL, Sharepoint, Xbox, Zune, HealthVault to other emerging technologies..digWin is a social media based where Microsoft technical communities can share stories, comment about it, rate it and promote to the home page by voting it up.
We are also in the making of social networking features for digWin. I hope to share this with you soon enough.
About the user experience - we now have a better web interface where users can navigate the site easily. The site is still on beta mode, we continue to run on beta at least for another few months as some of our unique features are yet to be implemented and tested.
For now, here is a screen shots of digWin home page.
This is the final part of my previous postings and I would like to conclude this series by mentioning some nitty-gritty facts before choosing your preferred hosting company. If you have missed reading my previous posts on this series, do visit them at the below URLs:
- Are You A Growing Small Business? Exchange Hosting will bring peace of mind! (Part I)
- Exchange Hosting: Factors which can bring peace of mind to your growing small business (Part II)
Introduction
After all the initial studies, now you are considering the hosting company to outsource your e-mail infrastructure. Wait! Aska few more questions… Dave Grantz recently published a nice article where he advises customers to ask some essential questions. Why would some of the hosting companies rush with an attractive deal while compromising reliability and customer support? Customers should realize that not all the hosting companies offer redundant infrastructure, stable backups and efficient support. While offering down to earth lower price per mailbox, they might be eyeing on various extra fees for services. Who knows, there might be some hidden clause where customer will be stuck with the hosting providers for a certain period once signed up.
Know the difference: Managed Hosting & Non-managed Hosting
Managed Hosting – In a managed environment, the following tasks should be performed by the hoster:
- Server maintenance, related facilitation in the datacenter & physical security of the whole infrastructure.
- Data backups, patch management, support related issues & escalation which occurs from time to time.
- Related software license management and further procurement of hardware/software, if any.
In a Non-Managed Hosting environment, you can rent a server in its datacenter rack space. The way servers are being managed and maintained is not the hoster’s headache. If something happens to these servers, you literally have to worry about how to bring this back online not the hosters. In other words, you crush your business continuity by outsourcing the server.Read more here
Which one makes sense to outsource first out of all the infrastructure components in your organization? I vote for email systems (guess it’s based on MS Exchange too). The first benefit which comes into picture is reduced cost; let the hosting providers carry the headache of the most difficult responsibilities such as operation, keeping the infrastructure up-to-date with latest technologies, customer support, complying various regulations from government, etc.
Away from complexity
Managing e-mail server needs expertise; if it’s Microsoft Exchange Server, the magnitude of complexity is drastic and needs real technical expertise to manage it. Microsoft Exchange is being the dominated email server in the market; hence most SMBs prefer this platform due to its usability factors. Good news is there are many Exchange hosting providers can consolidate and take care of your organization’s entire email infrastructure, hosting, email management, support etc. So get rid of this unwanted complexity from your business as hosters can take care of single point of failures, reliability and high-availability.Read more here
Growing SMB’s should definitely concentrate on its own core competencies. Though email is a critical application which helps to drive business, it does not related to the product and services that you are offering to your customers.
In other words, reduce the cost of running the business/resources in order to bring revenue. I have seen that many SMBs are doing mistakes by engaging its own human resources to maintain organization’s IT infrastructure, namely, CRM, e-mail, Pabx etc. at the expense of its talented human resources who are supposed to be doing work on its core competencies. We all must agree that these are cornerstone to run the business in today’s world, but look for alternative method to manage the IT.
What’s next?
For many companies, this is a key transformation phase in terms of IT infrastructure because they realized expenses in managing IT inside the company with its own people. Therefore, an outsourcing company will be a better choice - better service than in-house at lower cost, very minimum complexities and release your staff for doing better productive job. Read more here
Technorati : Exchange_Hosting_benefits, Exchange_hosting_2007, SMB_Hosting, SMB_IT
Del.icio.us : Exchange_2007_Hosting, Microsoft, advice, email_hosting, exchange_hosting, guide, hosting, tips
