TABLE OF CONTENTS With Exchange 2000, Microsoft introduced the front-end and back-end (FE/BE) topology, which basically means you have one or more FE servers placed in front of your BE servers. The FE servers job is to proxy mail client requests to the BE servers. An FE/BE scenario provides your organization with several benefits. To use an FE/BE topology, your organization would typically need to be of a certain size, because the FE/BE topology primarily focuses on organizations with at least two Exchange servers in addition to one or more FE servers overkill for many small organizations. In this chapter we cover the following topics:
Deploying a single-server scenario
Deploying a front-end/back-end scenario
Securing the front-end server(s)
Exchange 2003 behind an ISA Server 2000
By the time you reach the end of this chapter you will have a good understanding of the possible scenarios for deploying Exchange in your organization. You will know the benefits and drawbacks of each of the possible deployment scenarios. In addition, you will be shown how to sufficiently secure your FE/BE servers. To finish the chapter, we take a closer look at how introducing an Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server to your environment could benefit your Exchange messaging system.
Because many small organizations don t have the budget to invest in an FE/BE solution, most of them still use a so-called single-server scenario, which unfortunately means that these smaller organizations often are more vulnerable than bigger ones simply because they don t have the...
