Hi All

Sorry if this is in the wrong place but I'm after some thoughts on the benefits of server 2008.

Currently we run a 2003 domain (6 servers over 3 sites) 2003 exchange and about 100 XP workstations.

In April next year we will be replacing all of our kit. The workstations will stay on Xp as we have issues with Vista.

But is there a benefit of upgrading the servers to 2008 and exchange 2007.

Bearing in mind we currently have cals and server licence for 2003 and XP, if we upgrade to 2008 we need to purchase new Cals

Is there a noticeable benefit to exchange 2007 over 2003 and 2008 (we will never use the new read only domain controller function in 2008)
 

In all honesty then there is no real point in currently going to 2008.

I am in the middle of an upgrade project where the company is using NT4 and wanted to upgrade to 2008, it now looks like that's out because of certain issues so we will be going to 2003 instead.

As far as Ex2007 is concerned a lot of the administration is now carried out in Powershell rather than a GUI interface.

One bit of advice for you, if your servers are upto doing their job now, don't bother upgrading them. If you replace working boxes for no real reason other than a hardware refresh you're potentially opening a can of worms.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

Of course there are benefits.  Improved security is a big one.  Built in-virtualization is another.  But the question that you should be asking (and that only you can answer) is whether it the benefits outweigh the costs of upgrading.  The next question (or perhaps the first question) is "how can I make upgrading cheaper?"

You can save a lot of money on licensing with Hyper-V and Server 2008.  If you buy 2008 Standard edition you can run one physical and one virtual copy of Server 2008 on the same piece of hardware.  If you buy Enterprise edition then you can run 4 copies of Server 2008 on that piece of hardware.  If you wanted to go nuts and get Datacenter edition you get unlimited licenses on that piece of hardware.  So if you have a number of servers in one location you can definitely save some money on licensing by using Hyper-V and Server 2008.

Are you using Terminal Services?  If so, there's a lot in 2008 that makes Terminal Services much better than in 2003.  Do you need to give your users remote access to the network?  If so you might be interested in the NAC components of Server 2008.  There's a lot more to Server 2008 than just read-only DCs.

 

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator  

Also look at product lifecycle. If you stay with Exchange 2003 and Windows 2003 for this refresh, are they still going to be supported by the time you get to the end of that refresh cycle?

It makes sense to install Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 as they are the current versions of these products. Yes, this involves increased costs for CALs and training. But if you don't do it now, you'll likely be in the same boat for the next refresh, when a different version of Server and Exchange are out.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.
http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/
 

HI All,

Thanks for the replies, and looking into some of the new features the improved terminal service side would be of a big benefit.

I'm not yet convinced by Virtualisation for us as we only have a max of 3 servers on one site.

Domain \ file server
Exchange server
Financial server

I'm not keen on the idea if I have a hardware failure more than one server would be out of action.

We refresh most of our kit every 3 years so product life would still be OK (apart from XP)

Thanks for the advice I will keep on reading


 

Ah...well if you go with Hyper-V (or VMWare ESX for that matter, but Hyper-V is included with Server 2008) then you can cluster two Hyper-V servers together for failover.  If you lose a piece of hardware then your VMs will be restarted on the remaining server, so you would actually have no servers out of action.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator  

Some things still shouldn't be virtualized:
1. Exchange mailbox servers
2. The DC holding the PDC emulator role
3. SQL servers

There are known issues with those.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.
http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/
 

Quote:

1. Exchange mailbox servers

This is changing. Virtualization is here and becoming more and more mainstream.

http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2008/02/16000-exchange.html

The recommendation on that is not likely to change. You can virtualize other Exchange roles, but the level of file access that mailbox servers need isn't valid for virtualization. In every performance test so far, there is a hit when virtualized. Doesn't matter the VM platform. Additionally, the UM role should not be virtualized.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.
http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/
 

Quote:

The recommendation on that is not likely to change. You can virtualize other Exchange roles, but the level of file access that mailbox servers need isn't valid for virtualization. In every performance test so far, there is a hit when virtualized. Doesn't matter the VM platform. Additionally, the UM role should not be virtualized.

You can say the same thing for any application.  There is always a performance hit when virtualizing.  On applications that are disk I/O intensive there CAN be a significant penalty, but if you're using VMWare ESX and Raw Device Mapping you can eliminate a LOT of that performance hit for disk I/O.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator