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Looking for server(s) to host Microsoft Exchange 2013
TheZealous
Member
Hi,
We are looking for a server or servers... at a datacenter that can host our email for our users. Typically, we have around 60 users that need around 100GB email box space. Yupe, they do a lot of heavy adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files. Are there any recommendation host/datacenter that I can use at a fair price? So currently we have these licenses in house.
- Microsoft Server 2012 R2 Datacenter
- Microsoft Server 2012 R2 Standard
- VMware ESXi 5.5
- Microsoft Exchange 2013 license
- Microsoft Lync 2013 license
- Microsoft SQL server 2012
What I am looking for is a solution to host our email exchange server and possible MS Lync 2013 in the future. We typically will use VMware ESXi 5.5 to generate VMs that will host our servers 
. So...Will 1 dedicated server with E3 series, 10TB bandwidth, 4TB regular none SSD hdd do the job?
Are there any hosts out there that currently have any great offer towards this request?
Looking forward for your input.
Thanks,
TZ.
Comments
Go for OVH
OVH seems to offer a full solution for Exchange... which is not what we want
. we want to be able to install it and manage it ourselves.
Also online.net.
Dedicated and powerful servers:
http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/hosting/
http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/enterprise/
Private and Dedicated Exchange Hosting http://www.ovh.ie/emails/hosted-exchange-2013/private-exchange.xml
I also rent a server from them and it is awesome
no bandwidth limit and no setup fees (no setup fees in their data centers located in canada)
Removed
You are going to need this:
http://www.drugstore.com/products/prod.asp?pid=10285&catid=183121&aid=338666&aparam=10285&kpid=10285&CAWELAID=120142990000007601&CAGPSPN=pla&kpid=10285
Nope, he need a Costco size!!! :P
EDIT = Maybe @MarkTurner can do something for you!
lol. Whatever it take, I will make it happen guys
. I've been a Windows sysadmin for awhile, so I think I will be ok (I hope)...
Thank you so much for your suggestion... I cannot believe they are offer 256 IPs free monthly subscription... I asume this is public IPs and not internal IPs ?
We can offer the following:
Price: $200/month
We can also discuss of a custom quote if you are interested.
Regards, David.
OVH Canada bill 3$/IP to setup. After that, no monthly fees.
Each server has their own private IPs by default, if you'll set it up like as a dedicated server for different VPS(s). Or just completely utilize the entire dedicated server. But yeah, you can have your own private IPs. For public IPs, yes there is just a one time fee like $1-2 dollars and that's it. No bandwidth limit, you have 1Gbps speed (500Mbps premium/guaranteed) with Anti-DDoS Pro protection and other stuff.
Here are the features of their servers:
http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/free-ips.xml
http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/backup-ftp.xml
http://www.ovh.com/us/anti-ddos/
http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/distributions/
http://www.ovh.com/us/about-us/components.xml
https://ca.api.ovh.com
Plus they have a promo here, like 20% off http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/range-2013/
By default, most of the hard drives uses RAID mirroring. However, there are some configurations that offer a different type of the RAID thing. As for the DDoS protection, migrating to the Anti-DDoS Pro feature is free of charge.
I am paying under $100 for 64GB of RAM with 4TB of hard drive.
@TheZealous - if you are even considering hosting this outside of your private network then you should ONLY be considering facility based providers. If this is corporate email then the last thing you want to be doing is dealing with an untold string of resellers of resellers.
If you are going to use OVH, then make sure you take their 'Enterprise' service. Online.net I would absolutely not recommend just due to their disregard for professional support. But even still neither I would trust with a corporate grade service, I would strongly look at something a little more expensive like Softlayer or Rackspace for this. You'll get grade A support then, the last thing you need is your server shutdown because of some nonsense complaint and having to do battle to get it back online
The "hosting" range offers free licenses for various services and operating systems. http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/hosting/ > http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/hosting/#mb_os
For example, free Windows 2008 (R2) and 2012 (R2) Standard and Web license.
Now if you are talking about considering your private networks, you might want to consider their "infrastructure range" because it contains a vRack private network, http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/infra/ for more info: http://www.ovh.com/us/solutions/vrack/ They offer multiple private secure networks.
I recently asked a similar requirement to a OVH sales representative. It strongly pushed the VmWare private cloud solution. It said that SLA and support are much better than standard dedicated offers, and there is a integration layer to the private in-house company Vsphere Vcenter. I suggest to place a call to OVH sales. They are trying hard to paint themselves as budget enterprise-grade service providers, lately. I myself would not use them for a sensitive job such as this just now, but I have been spoiled by previous experiences.
If you want stability and ability to grow without issues, you need to setup a bunch of VM. At least 1 Exchange server, 1 remote access server with web application proxy service role (OWA reverse proxy), 1 domain controller (with the ADFS role required by the web application proxy - will not be actually used because the proxy should be configured with passtrough authentication). I would add a Linux-based relay/antispam as frontend, because the wast majority of MTA are Linux-based and this will greatly improve the compatibility. I suggest Mailscanner; there is a old thread on this forum with more options.
You really need two servers, because I believe you need a VM replication/backup solution to avoid service interruption if the main server goes down (most E3 servers don't even have redundant PSUs).
16 Gb Ram may be enough, but I would rather order a 32 Gb E3 server, with the hardware RAID controller required by ESXi. Exchange only needs CPU power when users are hitting the OWA search function, so a E3 may fit the bill. Exchange constantly hammers the disks, and the a cheap entry-level 2-4 disks SATA setup may be too slow. It may work for a while if the RAID cache is big (I never tried myself), but the first time a global operation is needed on very large mailboxes (such as the recovery of a deleted mailbox item, or a rebuild) the server may grind to a halt. I would use 6 x 15K SAS as bare minumum for your 60x100Gb mailbox requirements, or at least be ready to switch to higher performance storage as soon as the users will start to complain. When sizing the ESXi datastore, don't forget the space needed for the recovery database (if you plan to support mailbox recovery from backups).
When Outlook in cached mode is deployed, remember to change the default 50GB ost file size limit (by registry manipulation).
Absolutely true. And if the company does contract work, be sure to check the contract requirements. Many large organizations have ISO 27000 certifications, this needs to be seriously accounted for before outsourcing the mail server or collaboration server. Last thing you want is to put down a work because you can't show the required paperworks to the customer.
I won't recommend OVH - yes they are cheap but you get what you pay for.
OVH is good if you know what your doing, network and hardware is stable. One thing about Exchange is memory, you'll need a ton of it. I also suggest running at least two for failover. (Two VMs on the same hardware is fine, its mainly for system crashes)
Thanks for all the details and guidance here guys. I am going for OVH with RAID hdd and multiple VM for fail-over.
Exchange doesn't really need a lot... I agree it needs around 8GB but we gave our own Exchange environment 64GB ram and it populated the lot. It see's how much ram you've got and allocates it all no matter how much you really have or it does at least on 2010. - We used 1vCPU core per CAS Exchange server and it was fine until we got around 500 people connecting at once.
Why is your exchange crashing? exchange when setup and managed properly is extremely robust. What is this "at least two for failover" you are talking about? how are you configuring your servers in this way?
You want to manage it yourself.... that alone isnt a good enough reason when comparing it to the Office 365 solution, availability and pricing...
well you have around -60-Users - did I read it right? That doesn't mean too many (hundreds) of users connecting simultaneously. You can pull this off easily with a Good 6/8GB SSD VPS/Cloud. Yes consider spanning it over 2-3 servers over time for redundancy.
Also please consider a good location near to your userbase, else you may end up when syncing bigger files frequently as you mentione they are PSD/Ai files.