Exchange server Implemenetation Analysis
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I think it is less than that they are tinkering and more than their infrastructure is more complex. You probably only have one or two email servers. Places where I have been have hundreds of them. They constantly need to have hardware maintenance, patches applies, clustering managed, capacity planning done, etc. And they are attacked much more often. Once you add clustering, especially on a big scale, you get lots and lots of issues. But it is pretty hard to avoid in a massive environment, even if only for handling the capacity.
Yep, our whole system is complex so it can have issues easily. But, we have many people who can work on any issues quickly. We get many attempted attacks from China daily as well, sometimes hourly or worse.
Which, in turn, leads to more, smaller issues but less often to complete fires including the loss of the entire environment.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Exactly. I only give remote access to those that require it. It's a fairly crude and trivial layer of security, but all the same I have some fears about giving all staff remote access to our data.
Remote access to data and remote access to their individual email accounts is a little different, though. Granted, their email is your data, no question there, just that it is data that they already have complete access to and manage themselves. It's not like more general data.
They could just as easily email to their personal emails.
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@scottalanmiller said:
For example, even the average IT pro thinks that Exchange requires a SAN (not even recommended by MS!!)
They do?
I'll be polling my friends.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For example, even the average IT pro thinks that Exchange requires a SAN (not even recommended by MS!!)
They do?
I'll be polling my friends.
If I remember right MS also recommends RAID 5. /sarcasm
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Exactly. I only give remote access to those that require it. It's a fairly crude and trivial layer of security, but all the same I have some fears about giving all staff remote access to our data.
Remote access to data and remote access to their individual email accounts is a little different, though. Granted, their email is your data, no question there, just that it is data that they already have complete access to and manage themselves. It's not like more general data.
I do the same thing but for entirely different reasons. We limit access to avoid exposing ourselves to outside of normal hour work issues. 80%+ of our staff are hourly employees, sure some of them would like remote access to their email but we don't allow it to prevent the possibility that they will come back and say we owe them pay for checking their email outside of work hours.
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For example, even the average IT pro thinks that Exchange requires a SAN (not even recommended by MS!!)
They do?
I'll be polling my friends.
If I remember right MS also recommends RAID 5. /sarcasm
I thought I heard that was changed.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For example, even the average IT pro thinks that Exchange requires a SAN (not even recommended by MS!!)
They do?
I'll be polling my friends.
If I remember right MS also recommends RAID 5. /sarcasm
I thought I heard that was changed.
Note the sarcasm. It never was the case to my recollection. They mentioned RAID 5 in a whitepaper but never as a recommended configuration.
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@Dashrender said:
I do the same thing but for entirely different reasons. We limit access to avoid exposing ourselves to outside of normal hour work issues. 80%+ of our staff are hourly employees, sure some of them would like remote access to their email but we don't allow it to prevent the possibility that they will come back and say we owe them pay for checking their email outside of work hours.
Wouldn't that be an HR request then, not you choosing to block it.. Or that should come from HR anyway.
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@Dashrender said:
I do the same thing but for entirely different reasons. We limit access to avoid exposing ourselves to outside of normal hour work issues. 80%+ of our staff are hourly employees, sure some of them would like remote access to their email but we don't allow it to prevent the possibility that they will come back and say we owe them pay for checking their email outside of work hours.
I have similar concerns. If people are off sick for a certain number of days they no longer get paid. But if people are off sick for a certain number of days but occasionally respond to e-mail.....? It seems a grey area.
It is an HR issue and having raised this issue at work, no-one else seem to give a shit, so I've decided not to concern myself with it either.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Why are you looking at having Exchange in house? That should be an extremely rare thing today. There are unique cases where it still makes sense but generally that is only very large firms with extremely special needs, massive amount of Exchange expertise (that you have questions at all about it flags your firm as not really being a candidate to have it be in house) with specific regulations making it necessary.
There is just no way to run Exchange in house anywhere near as well as Microsoft runs it themselves.
@sreekumarpg discussed this with me initially on this, and the first thing came was about office 365. Unfortunately, the company's top guys are not yet convinced to move anything to the "cloud"
Which is why he has to look for all possible options to do a in house setup with few pilot users and do a feasibility study and I really hope with that test, someone will be convinced to run this with O365 is far more better than a hosted one. Their user base more than 1000 if i am not mistaken, worldwide.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
I do the same thing but for entirely different reasons. We limit access to avoid exposing ourselves to outside of normal hour work issues. 80%+ of our staff are hourly employees, sure some of them would like remote access to their email but we don't allow it to prevent the possibility that they will come back and say we owe them pay for checking their email outside of work hours.
Wouldn't that be an HR request then, not you choosing to block it.. Or that should come from HR anyway.
Sure, if we had an HR department. HR is the Office Manager (basically our CEO in a medium sized clinic). And this request did come from her.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Dashrender said:
I do the same thing but for entirely different reasons. We limit access to avoid exposing ourselves to outside of normal hour work issues. 80%+ of our staff are hourly employees, sure some of them would like remote access to their email but we don't allow it to prevent the possibility that they will come back and say we owe them pay for checking their email outside of work hours.
I have similar concerns. If people are off sick for a certain number of days they no longer get paid. But if people are off sick for a certain number of days but occasionally respond to e-mail.....? It seems a grey area.
It is an HR issue and having raised this issue at work, no-one else seem to give a shit, so I've decided not to concern myself with it either.
I'm not sure the differences between the US and the UK regarding these workers.
If our hourly employees are sick, they are NOT getting paid - regardless of anything else. If they have short or long term disability insurance, that could kick in and pay them, but that's between the employee and the insurance company and has little or nothing to do with our company.
Our concerns aren't around people being sick though. It's about them reading/acting upon emails when they are not scheduled to be working. In an hourly situation, typically they would have to be paid for any work (acting upon email, even if that action is just replying to an email with information) would need to be paid.
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@Ambarishrh said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Why are you looking at having Exchange in house? That should be an extremely rare thing today. There are unique cases where it still makes sense but generally that is only very large firms with extremely special needs, massive amount of Exchange expertise (that you have questions at all about it flags your firm as not really being a candidate to have it be in house) with specific regulations making it necessary.
There is just no way to run Exchange in house anywhere near as well as Microsoft runs it themselves.
@sreekumarpg discussed this with me initially on this, and the first thing came was about office 365. Unfortunately, the company's top guys are not yet convinced to move anything to the "cloud"
Which is why he has to look for all possible options to do a in house setup with few pilot users and do a feasibility study and I really hope with that test, someone will be convinced to run this with O365 is far more better than a hosted one. Their user base more than 1000 if i am not mistaken, worldwide.
World wide? Even more of a reason to put this in a 'cloud.' Now this is a place where people are constantly scared by the term. One of my small clients won't touch 'cloud' things either. Heck, they considered backing up data over the internet to be to dangerous to do. shakes head
What solution do they have today? If they aren't already running Exchange, why are they even looking at it for in-house use?
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They are on lotus notes I guess
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@Ambarishrh said:
They are on lotus notes I guess
Ewww. I got stuck using that at IBM. It was horrible. Worst email system I've ever encountered.
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@Ambarishrh said:
They are on lotus notes I guess
They don't happen to be a huge dairy out of Texas?
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@Dashrender said:
If our hourly employees are sick, they are NOT getting paid ...
Depends where you work. I've been hourly AND had unlimited sick time before.
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@Dashrender said:
Our concerns aren't around people being sick though. It's about them reading/acting upon emails when they are not scheduled to be working. In an hourly situation, typically they would have to be paid for any work (acting upon email, even if that action is just replying to an email with information) would need to be paid.
I know that this is an area of current dispute.... but I've never worked anywhere that paid people to work off of the clock. If they are told they are done and continue to work, doesn't matter, they are done. Most places that I've worked were happy to pay overtime and have you work because few people were doing much extra time. But in places where you were done at a certain time, that was it. The company was not liable for them working when they were told not to. Otherwise, the company is liable for them "thinking about work" as much as checking emails when not at work, right?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
If our hourly employees are sick, they are NOT getting paid ...
Depends where you work. I've been hourly AND had unlimited sick time before.
Weird, how does that work?
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The question becomes..... does the business (or the law, but I believe not) that an employee can force a company to pay them for unrequested work? How do you deal with employees who don't walk out the door right at the end of their shift? If you take the "if they voluntarily answer emails, they get paid" thing and expand it to the physical world, strange things start to happen. Loitering in the work parking lot is paid even when the business is closed and they have no assigned worked to do?
