Microsoft Exchange Server for Windows 2000: Planning, Design, and Implementation
A comprehensive resource for implementors and managers of Exchange Server 2000 networks.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Microsoft Exchange Server for Windows 2000: Planning, Design, and Implementation
Chapter 1: Searching for Platinum
Overview
"I can't do it" never yet accomplished anything; "I will try" has performed wonders.
George P. Burnham
1.1 The road to Exchange 2000
Exchange 2000 seems to have been coming for a very long time. Not as long as Exchange 4.0, which was only 39 months late when it was eventually shipped in March 1996, but certainly long enough to be noticed. Exchange 5.5 was shipped in November 1997, so the development period for Exchange 2000 spanned nearly three years, an era in Internet time.
The development team could be excused for its apparent inability to ship code fast. Exchange 2000 is built on top of Windows 2000. It is difficult to develop code on top of an operating system that changes on a daily basis, something that the other versions of Exchange never really had to do. Windows NT 3.51 was reasonably stable for the Exchange 4.0 and 5.0 teams, and Windows NT 4.0 represented the only platform for Exchange 5.5. Sure, there were service packs and patches to deal with, and some major technical challenges were encountered along the way. For example, a lot of work had to be done in Exchange 5.5 to make the product cluster-aware so that it could support Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS), but this was nothing like the ever-changing nature of Windows 2000. For a long time, builds of Exchange 2000 were dependent on a particular build of Windows 2000. If you didn't have the correct build of Windows 2000, you couldn't...
Copyright Butterworth-Heinemann 2001 under license agreement with Books24x7
