Customer currently has a new HP server with Windows 2008 R2. They have now decided to add Exchange 2010 to their company. They have around 18 users and server is only used for network services and File and printer sharing along with one shared Access mdb file. Understand it is not recommended to install Exchange on the ADC but as they have only one server and don't wish purchase another. Aside from some performance hits and issues if the one server goes down is there any other problems that should be considered. Is Exchange on a Windows 2008 R2 Server very different to Exchange as part of Windows 2008 SBS? Thanks Chris

Hi, First of all, SBS 2008 includes Exchange 2007 (not 2010). Secondly, installing Exchange 2010 @ W2K8 R2 DC will work (yes, it's not recommended... but... for 20 users I'm understanding that you're not going to purchase dedicated mail server and/or storage appliance, etc). You just need to make sure you have enough RAM on the machine (after all it "All-in-one" DC/DNS/Exchange/Maybe other services such as DHCP, NAP, etc) to run smoothly Exchange. It's recommended that you'll read & understand the memory configuration requirements: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346700.aspx Beside this, you can (if you have license of course) install another W2K8 R2 as a virtual machine on the same server and install the Exchange 2010 on this machine, or move to Exchange Online (BPOS) or 3rd party solutions if you still thinking about purchasing Exchange 2010, you can host 20 mailboxes on the cloud using BPOS and pay per mailbox 50$~ per year(!), [yes, you can do that too with 3rd party companies such as Google Apps Premier Edition]).Netanel Ben-Shushan, IT Consultant & Trainer | Website (Hebrew): http://www.ben-shushan.net | IT Services: http://www.ben-shushan.net/services | Weblog (Hebrew): http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/netanelb | E-mail: msilforums@ben-shushan.net

The biggest issue is going to be DR. If you had a separate domain controller then DR of Exchange is actually quite easy. With everything on a single machine, then you have to recover the domain first, then Exchange - unless you are using some kind of imaging backup technology (although that may not be Exchange aware backup). It would also depend on the configuration of the server - RAM and storage. 20 users shouldn't cause a problem. Of course if the company grows, then you might have issues. I wouldn't want to run more than about 40 users on a single server system. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources

Thanks for the info. The customer are currently on Exchange Online and I have issues with payments. They do not use credit cards only cheques and apparently Microsoft Online won't accept cheques. Also problems settingup Blackberrys. Plan on installing the trial and seeing if this works for them. If not presume straightforward to uninstall. Understand DR can have some compllications being a single server. Thanks ChrisChris P