On the opening page of "Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000: Building Highly Available Messaging and Knowledge Management Systems," the book's author, Jerry Cochran, emphasizes that the concept of mission-criticality should not be defined solely by the size of a messaging system. In other words, the development and successful deployment of mission-critical messaging systems should be as important to small- and medium-size businesses as it is to large companies.
Cochran removes any doubt about the true definition of mission-criticality when he explains it as "a term applied to various systems on which the success of an organization or project depends. The loss of a mission-critical system results in unacceptable operational, functional, or financial harm to the organization or project." In light of this definition, Cochran wrote this book to discuss everything associated both with small and large deployments of Exchange Server. Examples of topics covered in the text include concepts, methods, and tools--as well as the details of the types of threats that can cripple Exchange systems.
Compared with many computer books on the market, "Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000" is not a physically large book. But the author has packed a lot of information into its 425 pages. The book's nine chapters and two appendices discuss everything from the definition of mission-critical service level agreements (SLAs) to the differences between reactive and proactive management in an Exchange environment. That is, "flying by the seat of your pants" (reactive) as opposed to dealing with problems in an orderly fashion (proactive). The author suggests that adopting the latter strategy will short-circuit concerns before they escalate into major dramas.
The book was written for readers who possess some knowledge of and experience with Exchange. If you want an introduction to Exchange, you'll have to look elsewhere. The author provides detailed information that gives readers insights and new perspectives into the challenging areas of high availability and mission-critical system deployment. Acknowledging that Exchange 2000 is a "huge and complex product," Cochran freely admits that he has ignored certain areas so that he can concentrate on core technologies such as the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE). The significance of ESE is the close connection and influence it has on areas such as disaster recovery, storage management, security, and clustering, all of which play an important role in determining a system's ongoing availability.
The first major topic that Cochran tackles is a comprehensive analysis of downtime outages. In four subsections of the book's second chapter, he discusses the cost of Exchange being down, the incidents associated with an outage, how to assess the causes of downtime, and the role of SLAs. Cochran notes that you can develop and apply SLAs to a system's various aspects (e.g., performance, recovery, security, interoperability, virus-detection rates, replication timeouts, system availability).
Next, Cochran discusses the foundations of Exchange database technology in-depth. He states that implementing effective disaster-recovery procedures and high-availability best practices is difficult unless you understand the underlying technology. Central to this discussion is a comparison of the storage facilities in Exchange 2000 and the earlier versions of the product.
Cochran, who was previously a manager for Exchange Solutions Engineering at Compaq, recalls how many organizations were ill prepared when problems occurred. In the disaster-recovery section of the book, Cochran reports that companies racked up hours of downtime "simply because they did not have a good backup or because they interfered with Exchange Server's own recovery measures." To help remedy that situation, the author has developed what he refers to as the "10 Best Practices for Exchange 2000 Disaster Recovery." If you're responsible for managing an Exchange environment, you should make a list of these practices and display them in a prominent position for everyone to see.
In the book's sixth and seventh chapters, the author's focus turns to the power of leveraging, first with respect to storage technology and second, with respect to the use of cluster technologies for Exchange systems. Cochran believes that a thorough understanding of storage technology is key to being successful with Exchange. Unless a system can protect its data and deliver that data quickly, that system will never achieve mission-critical status. The author makes his point succinctly when he says "no amount of management, training, and investment in other areas can help you if the underlying storage strategy for your Exchange server and across your entire deployment is weak." Likewise, the clustering technology in Windows 2000 and Windows NT is important because of the significant reliability benefits that the technology offers. Topics covered in this part of the book include problems that clustering does (and doesn't) solve, cluster-aware versus noncluster-aware applications, cluster support for Exchange 2000 and Exchange Server 5.5, and the concerns that you must resolve when deploying Exchange clusters.
Security is a powerful measure of a system's high availability. Unfortunately, security also is an area often overlooked by many busy, stressed developers and designers, and even some slack administrators. Cochran doesn't omit security concerns from this book. The eighth chapter investigates the five most common threats to security: Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, viruses, unauthorized access, forgery, and mail relaying. But knowledge of security flaws in itself isn't enough, so the remainder of the chapter discusses Win2K security enhancements and techniques for effectively locking down Exchange 2000. You should take heed of Cochran's advice and assess your own environment so that you can develop strategies for overcoming those threats most likely to occur.
The final chapter of the book highlights one technique for increasing system availability that might surprise some readers, especially those who are heavily biased toward technical solutions. And that technique is the use of proactive management. To back up his claim of proactive management's power, Cochran cites a situation in which a company achieved remarkable results by "simply deploying a management application that was Exchange-aware and by putting in place some problem notification, tracking, and resolution/response procedures." You can apply proactive management in a number of areas (e.g., performance, configuration and fault detection, notification, resolution).
The book concludes with two appendices. The first appendix contains supplemental information and documentation that covers recovery procedures for Exchange 2000, as well as information about Exchange 2000 security. The second appendix contains information directed at software developers who want to take advantage of Exchange backup and restore APIs to create their own software.
At the end of the first chapter, Cochran states that he hopes the book "provides a starting point and basis for successful implementation of mission-critical Microsoft Exchange 2000." He's achieved that goal.
You can find additional information about "Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2000: Building Highly Available Messaging and Knowledge Management Systems," including chapter titles and information about the author, at the publisher's Web site (www.bhusa.com/digitalpress).
Author: Jerry Cochran
Publisher: Digital Press
Published: December 2000
ISBN: 1555582338
Paperback 425 pages
Price: $44.99