3.1 Exchange 2000 requirements

Exchange 2000 is heavily integrated with Windows 2000 and its associated services and cannot be deployed correctly without a sound Windows 2000 infrastructure and related services, one of the most important components consisting of the Active Directory and the DNS services. Additional components of Windows 2000 are definitely required, and, in fact, Exchange 2000 will just not install if IIS and NNTP services are not present. Exchange needs IIS to communicate with Internet protocols by the means of IIS virtual servers, and borrows from and enhances the default Windows 2000-supplied NNTP service. By looking at the Exchange 2000 architecture presented previously, it is clear that tight integration into the operating system and its related services is characteristic of Exchange 2000. The challenge becomes to properly take advantage of the infrastructure so it can better serve your Exchange 2000 organization, functions, and overall service. Beyond directory and network-related services, Exchange 2000 does take advantage of clustering, in a much better way than Exchange 5.5 did. Lastly, the Process Control, a feature of Windows 2000 Data Center, can bring certain advantages by providing Exchange 2000 the appropriate resources it requires in a Windows 2000 Data Center environment, whether it is run with 8 processors or more (up to 32 processors in fact).

On the other hand, Exchange 2000 does not take advantage of other Windows 2000 features, such as the encrypted file system or the compression facility in NTFS. Don't even attempt to locate a database or a...