White Paper - Microsoft Exchange 2000 Front-End Server and SMTP Gateway Hardware Scalability Guide (326268)

SUMMARY

This white paper provides hardware recommendations for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server front-end servers and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) gateways (also known as hubs). The recommendations in this white paper can help you build a highly scalable and reliable messaging system that is customized to the needs of your organization.

A front-end server is a server that receives requests from clients and relays them to the appropriate back-end server. A back-end server is a server that hosts at least one database to which front-end servers connect when relaying requests from clients. SMTP gateways are servers that route e-mail messages through an organization or the Internet to their final destination.

There are many factors that affect the performance of an Exchange 2000 Server front-end server. These factors include the protocols that are being used, the number of installed processors, the available memory, the anticipated network traffic, the use of secure authentication, and the use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt network traffic. You must take such factors into account before you chose the correct hardware for a specific Exchange 2000 Server program.