Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

Exchange upgrade earns mixed grades

Mammoth upgrade hits on management, system security and availability, but stumbles with immature antispam wares
By Joel Snyder and Joel Snyder, Rodney Thayer, Tom Henderson, Network World Lab Alliance , Network World , 01/08/2007
  • Share/Email
  • Comment
  • Print

Microsoft's recently released Exchange 2007 package is huge, literally. The reviewer's guide comprises 26,000 words, and the list of new features is 28 pages long. In this Clear Choice Test, we opted not to test every bit of code, but instead to dive deep in several critical areas important to large-scale deployments.

Overall, we found Exchange 2007's management and availability extensions are improved dramatically, and new architectural maneuvers have beefed up security, especially in the areas of compliance and e-mail policy management.

However, when we enabled Microsoft’s new antispam software on our Exchange 2007 deployment, we found that  it requires more engineering effort to compete with established vendors in that market.

Exchange 2007 is sized for the largest enterprises, because it requires 64-bit hardware. That signals that the product will need substantial hardware, software, network bandwidth and operations resources. We didn't run strenuous, repeatable benchmarks on Exchange 2007 for this features-based test.

MS antispam not on par with market leaders
In our test of the new antispam features shipping with Exchange 2007, Microsoft could not keep up with the market leaders' spam-catch rates or hold false-positive rates to acceptable levels.
Product Spam-catch rate False-positive rate
IronPort Anti-Spam 94% to 98% 0.1% to 0.4%
Symantec Brightmail 94% to 96% 0.2% to 0.5%
Exchange 2007 81% to 86% 2.1% to 2.3%
Barracuda Spam Firewall 79% to 84% 0.4%
Click to see: MS antispam

With Exchange 2007, Microsoft has solved one of the messaging platform's long-standing reliability issues by allowing for true database replication to independent storage subsystems. We used Exchange 2007's Cluster Continuous Replication service to build a cluster of two mailbox servers, each with independent disk storage. We turned off the cluster's active node and watched it continue to operate without a hitch.

The active/passive model consumes twice as many resources, depending on how the disk storage is replicated, but the cost of additional hardware could be low compared with the cost of losing an enterprise e-mail system.

  • Share/Email
  • Comment
  • Print
Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find out more

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost -- and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download the White Paper

Don't Fall For The Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Download the White Paper

Will You Add Tape Too?

Over two thirds of disk-only users look to add tape back into storage infrastructure according to recent survey.

Download Survey Information

Comment
Login
Forgot your account info?
Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed
Get instant email notification when white papers, webcasts, executive guides are added to our library. Stay informed and up-to-date with the latest on IT Technologies with Network World's Resource Alerts.
Network World,to go. Wherever you are. Breaking news delivered to your mobile device. Select the hottest topics in networking and start receiving Network World on your mobile device today.