OT: Mail servers / Exchange (was TNG PDC & NT BDC)

Gregory Leblanc GLeblanc at cu-portland.edu
Sun May 21 16:50:28 GMT 2000


> -----Original Message-----
> From: danb at eocwa.org [mailto:danb at eocwa.org]
> Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 9:20 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list SAMBA-NTDOM
> Subject: RE: OT: Mail servers / Exchange (was TNG PDC & NT BDC)
> 
> > I'd been avoiding having an NT Server box, but Exchange's 
> > requirement to
> > run on NT Server, coupled with our requirement to use Outlook 
> > for group
> > scheduling meant I had to cave. Ho hum. So far we've only 
> tried it out
> > on a couple of users - against a trial TNG domain, not in a real use
> > environment, but it appeared to work OK.
> > 
> > Anyone done a real evaluation of HP's Openmail? This might be an
> > alternative to Exchange, but I've no real idea whether it's complete
> > enough.
> 
> Yes.  And yes.  Openmail 6.0 with EP1 and a patch from EP2 seems real 
> stable with outlook2k here.  Using it for 50 users here and it works 
> great (even on our old, overloaded P133/32mb).  Why does 
> everyone think 
> Exchange is so stable and great anyway?  They're both buggy, but I 
> think Exchange is buggier.  

I don't have any trouble with Exchange crashing, although it does suck ram
(we've got a dual P-II 350, with 512MB of ram).  As an aside, no
administrator should EVER run exchange, it's a real pain.  Users love it,
admins should hate it.  Don't ask for details unless you want a 200 page
document.  
As for the domain controler bit, exchange does not need to run on a domain
conroller.  OWA, on the other hand, doesn't work properly unless it's on a
PDC or BDC, because it expects the user to have an account on the local
machine, which is only the case with DC boxes.  On a stand-alone, as part of
domain, the login name must be prefixed with the name of the user, e.g.
"DOMAIN\joeuser".  About 50% of our questions on OWA are caused by this
little idiotic thing...
	Greg


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