Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 on Site with Cdrom
Authors: Kevin Schuler, Shannon Turlington
Venue:  (1998)

From the Book: Introduction Introduction In todays fast-paced business environment, your organization needs more from its internal messaging system than just the ability to exchange email. Ideally, a messaging system should integrate an entire suite of useful capabilities, such as scheduling, task planning, information management, and online discussion. The system should improve productivity by enabling employees to work together across the network in virtual teams. It should provide choices for the publishing and dissemination of important information throughout the enterprise. It should foster communication with customers and partners through integration with other messaging systems and, most importantly, with the Internet. And the system must be easy to administer, scalable to organizations of any size, and able to grow as your company grows. Welcome to the world of Microsoft Exchange Server, the first messaging system that does all of this and more. Exchange Server is the ideal messaging infrastructure for organizations of any size, simply because it is so adaptable and customizable that it can be tailored to provide solutions to almost any businesss needs. And despite its wide range of features, Exchange Server can be easily implemented and administered by anyone, from the full-time system administrator of a large enterprise to the non-techie employee or owner of a small business or home-based office. This book will show you everything that Exchange Server has to offer and provide a practical, easy-to-use guide to implementing the features that meet the needs of your organization. From planning and deploying your Exchange Server system to creating collaboration and groupware applications and integrating with the Internetthis book tells you how to do it all, in a no-nonsense way that will help you get your Exchange Server system doing more for your organization than you ever thought possible. Whats Inside This book is organized and written in a user-friendly, practical format to help anyone get Exchange Server 5.5 up and running as their organizations messaging and information management infrastructure, whether theyre installing Exchange Server in the home office, on a small network, or on a large enterprise. Decision trees, worksheets, and checklists help plan the implementation of Exchange Server and make sure that deployment goes smoothly. Step-by-step instructions and screen shots illustrate every step, making it easy to install and configure Exchange Server and to implement Exchange Servers wide range of features. And practical examples, tips, and tricks help put Exchange Server to work to meet an organizations unique needs. The book is organized into several broad sections, with each section covering a different aspect of deploying and using Exchange Server. Part I, "Microsoft Exchange Server And Your Organization," introduces you to the benefits and features of Exchange Server and helps you plan how Exchange Server can meet your organizations needs. Part II, "Planning And Installing Microsoft Exchange Server," provides a complete tutorial for planning your organizations implementation of Exchange Server and installing the system according to your plans. Part III, "Administering And Optimizing Microsoft Exchange Server," covers everything that the Exchange Server administrator needs to know to keep the system running smoothly. Part IV, "Communication And Collaboration With Microsoft Exchange Server," guides you in using Exchange Servers many features for communicating with others and working in groups. Finally, the glossary, the appendices and CD-ROM provide additional information and software that will aid you in using Exchange Server and help you extend Exchange Servers features even further. Each broad section of the book is further broken down into chapters that address a narrower topic, as follows:  Chapter 1, "What Is Microsoft Exchange Server?," gives a broad overview of Exchange Server 5.5 and introduces you to the Exchange Server features that will benefit your business.  Chapter 2, "Needs Assessment," uses worksheets and examples to help you assess your organizations needs and how Exchange Server can meet them.  Chapter 3, "Installation Planning," provides decision trees, worksheets, and checklists for planning every aspect of your Exchange Server system, including system topology, hardware and software needs, and company policies.  Chapter 4, "Installing Exchange Server," takes you step by step through the installation and configuration of the Exchange Server system and components in accordance with your deployment plans.  Chapter 5, "Administering Exchange Server," describes the tasks involved in managing the Exchange Server system, including installing clients and security features, maintaining system components, monitoring the system for problems, backing up the system, and managing log files.  Chapter 6, "Optimizing Exchange Server," helps you optimize your Exchange Server configuration as your system grows and evolves, with tips and tricks for improving server, hardware, and network performance.  Chapter 7, "Using Microsoft Client Applications," shows how the Outlook and Team Manager 97 clients work with the Exchange Server system to accomplish workgroup and collaboration tasks.  Chapter 8, "Publishing Information With Exchange Server," describes how to use Exchange Servers public folder, electronic form, distribution list, and directory features to publish information on the system and build collaboration applications.  Chapter 9, "Building An Online Community," shows how to integrate your internal messaging infrastructure with the Internet and start building virtual communities using email, USENET newsgroups, and the World Wide Web.  Chapter 10, "Extending Exchange Server," provides an overview of third-party and Microsoft products that work with Exchange Server to extend the systems administration, information publishing and management, communication, and collaboration capabilities.  Appendix A, "Troubleshooting Tips And Tricks," gives no-nonsense advice for troubleshooting problems with your Exchange Server implementation.  Appendix B, "Related Internet Resources," points you toward World Wide Web, USENET, and email resources where you can further extend your knowledge of Exchange Server.  A glossary provides definitions of Exchange Server terms used throughout the book. Finally, the CD-ROM provides many valuable software utilities, add-ins, and sample applications that you can use with Exchange Server to make working with the system easier and add additional capabilities. Many of these tools are described in Chapter 10, along with practical examples for how they can be put to work in your implementation of Exchange Server. What You Need This book is written to be used with Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5. The client application used with Exchange Server 5.5 in this book is Microsoft Outlook 97. You can download an evaluation version of Exchange Server 5.5 and Outlook 97 8.03 from the Exchange Server Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/. The evaluation version includes everything you need to run Exchange Server 5.5 on one server computer and to run Outlook 8.03 on one client computer. To build a full Exchange Server messaging system that runs on a single server or across a network of multiple servers, you will need to license Exchange Server from Microsoft. The licensed version includes all the software needed to implement Exchange Server across your organization, the optional components described in this book, and the Outlook client application. You can get more information about licensing Exchange Server 5.5 from the same Web site. The hardware, software, and network requirements for Exchange Server vary considerably depending on the size and geographic disbursement of your organization, the needs of your users, and the Exchange Server functions you intend to implement. Chapter 3 provides a complete overview of the required software and hardware for running the basic Exchange Server system and for running any additional components you intend to implement, such as connectors to other systems or security features. It is essential that you consult the information in Chapter 3 when planning your organizations customized implementation of the Exchange Server system. At the very least, you will need to install Exchange Server 5.5 on a computer running Microsoft Windows NT Server, version 4.0 or later; Internet Information Server, version 3.0 or later; and Service Pack 3 or later. The computer running Exchange Server should have an Intel Pentium 60 or faster processor, at least 24MB memory, and at least 250MB hard disk space. Consult Chapter 3 for additional hardware requirements needed to fully optimize your Exchange Server system. Moving On Youre ready to start learning everything that Exchange Server 5.5 can do for your business. Chapter 1, "What Is Microsoft Exchange Server?," provides an overview of the beneficial features of Exchange Server, so you can begin planning how Exchange Server will meet your organizations unique needs. This chapter describes Exchange Servers centralized administration, client/server architecture, and extensibility and scalability features, all of which make Exchange Server the perfect solution for organizations of any size. It also goes over the diverse capabilities of Exchange Server for increasing productivity and for enabling users to work together across the enterprise by using client applications, such as Outlook. Finally, this chapter describes the Exchange Server features not offered by any other messaging system, including its wide range of choices for publishing and sharing information, its support of all Internet standards, and its integration with the World Wide Web. You might not be aware of how much Exchange Server 5.5 can do, so turn the page and find out.