Exchange Server 2007 Architecture

Exchange server is constantly striving to meet the diverse needs of large and small companies, and is widely recognized by users. Today, however, business users of all sizes have new, similar needs for communication services-such as compliance, security, and disaster recovery. To meet these new challenges, the architecture of Exchange Server 2007 is updated to take advantage of the X64 bit hardware, simplify management and routing, and enable an Exchange server to assume one or more server roles.

Server role

Exchange Server provides a comprehensive information system that can run on a single server-meaning that all Exchange service roles are installed on one server, just as Microsoft Small Business server products. But having a flexible, modular system that can be installed on multiple devices can achieve significant benefits in deployment, management, and security. This concept was first introduced in Exchange Server, where front-end servers can be set up to transfer incoming Internet client protocols to the appropriate mailbox server. The front-end server is optional, which lowers the burden on the mailbox server and simplifies access to Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access (OWA) and Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) users. Setting up a front-end server in a medium or large organization enables Exchange to be more flexible by centralizing specific tasks on a limited number of servers.

In Exchange Server 2007, the Role-based Deployment feature has been extended to allow you to assign predefined roles to specific servers. These predefined roles enable organizations to control mail flow, improve security, and distribute services.

Customers typically customize the installation process for their Exchange Server 2003, creating specific server roles in a very manual way. In Exchange Server 2007, roles are predefined and can be selected during the installation process. The roles selected during installation ensure that only the required services and components are installed. This approach not only simplifies the deployment process, but over time, exchange management and hardware utilization is more efficient and straightforward, especially to enhance the maintenance of the scalability of the system, the Exchange Server role is as follows: