Exchange 2003
We have now made the final decision to press on with Exchange 2003 and Windows 2003 Server. We have also sorted out the (very animated) discussion about the routing of mails through the MTA's. Any mail entering the email system with pass through the MTA, as will any mail leaving or passing between the staff and student systems. But any mail passing from staff to staff via Exchange 2003 will be routed internally by Exchange and will not be routed to the MTA.
Pint of lager top please landlord!
The new mail system
The Unisys consultant is here at UWE finalising his designs for the Exchange 2003 implementation. This is a messaging system for staff only, the students are going to get Sun One's Messaging solution.
We have a few issues with routing of SMTP traffic throughout the organisation, one party is adamant that all traffic must travel through a hub which virus checks and spam filters all messages. That is impossible to do with Exchange without stripping out all of the rich client functionality - which is why they asked us to design an Exchange based solution in the first place. There is a big showdown meeting tomorrow, should be interesting how it all pans out.
MIIS 2003
I have been in discussion with Microsoft and the Oxford Compter Group about our MIIS 20003 server (
Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 - formerly Metadirectory Services) implementation. This will be the tool we are going to use to provision user accounts in our new Active Direcory domain structure. They have offered to use us as a reference site - that will make life a lot easier for us to implement this, and give them a boost for MIIS in the University sector too.
Pretty Stooopid
Being a developer and an ex sys admin doesnt mean you are exempt from forgetting your username and password for a new system. Like I just forgot my username and password for this blog earlier on.
"Doh!" Ah well, back in now...
Exchange 2003 and MIIS 2003 meetings today, with all that entails. I have got meetings every day until Christmas, how do they think I'm going to get any work done? I need to work out how I'm going to get 38,000 accounts into AD and Exchange via MIIS and keep them synchronised with LDAP, NT4 and UNIX systems. As we are a university we change about a third of our user base every year so that is going to be fun next September/October isnt it?
The Pillars of Longhorn: "
The Pillars of Longhorn
The technologies of Longhorn are broken up into presentation ('Avalon'), data ('WinFS'), and communication ('Indigo') and are based on the Fundamentals pillar."
This is going to be a
big change for Windows systems. Its going to be bigger than the change from 16-bit Windows to Win32.
Exchange 2003 Training
Just finished Exchange 2003 training and my brains are hanging out at the moment. I can whip up an Exchange server in about 15 minutes now. And I know when they is broke and how to fix them.
It was a gruelling week in London, the course venue was adequate but the hotel was terrible! I knew we were cutting corners at work because of the cost, but I didnt know we were cutting so many!
