Microsoft Exchange Server is a popular mail server and accounting server developed by Microsoft Corporation. It runs exclusively on Windows Server, also known as Windows Exchange Server. This type of hosting allows users to access their mailboxes and other information through a web browser, Internet Explorer, or the Outlook Express application. This service is offered at an affordable price. However, not everyone can afford to invest in this server software because it comes with Microsoft Certified Support, which means that the company backing up the server is certified by Microsoft and they are able to offer technical support for free.
Microsoft Exchange Server offers different options to store information like emails, attachments, and other items.
The mailboxes of these systems are separated from the main server so that there would be no risk of information loss from a mishap within the company. One may ask what Microsoft Exchange Server is using for its cloud services.
The cloud applications use Microsoft Exchange Server as the backend application along with specific storage and database packages to store data. The user may also connect to the Exchange Server through the web services or Active Server Pages (ASP) and have the data in a browser. The service is highly scalable, considering that the number of nodes can grow dynamically without affecting the speed and performance of the exchange server. The nodes can also be clustered together to form data centers, which are capable of supporting the load of several servers.
Active clustering is one of the solutions that Microsoft Exchange Server offers for cloud computing.
The method involves having two or more servers connected to each other. With this method, the users can manage the emails in a way that it will be divided into the inbox, spam folder, and the junk file. There will be no need to open the emails in the email client in Microsoft Outlook since the messages will be stored in the server’s inbox.
Active-active management allows the exchange server to use different names for the different mailboxes on the server. This helps in simplifying the tasks of the IT department while reducing the costs associated with the process. In addition to that, it also reduces the time required for the IT personnel to look after the servers to make sure that it is running at all times. There are two types of clusters that this type of management uses. Single-machine and multi-machine clusters are the two types available for the users.
For the single-machine configuration, it uses only one server for handling the emails. One example of such an installation would be when you have just one user or a small team of employees. They can access the server, create a mailbox, and attach emails from their workstation or personal devices. Another option that you have is that when you have a cluster of servers, you can set the permissions for users to access the emails in the exchange server. You can also let the users access the emails through an email interface, if you want.
On the other hand, the multi-machine configuration uses more than one exchange server. In this case, you will have a dedicated machine that will act as the server for the entire organization. The user will be able to access the emails from any computer that is linked to the server, through an email client. Depending on the choice that you have, you can determine how many email clients you will be able to access through this method. For small organizations, it is possible to have just one email client, whereas for large companies you may want to have as many as 30 email clients.
- Another option that you have when you install Microsoft Exchange Server on your own server is to get it hosted on the world wide web.
- There are many companies that offer their services to set up a Microsoft Exchange Server on a cloud server.
- This type of setup is easier to implement because you do not have to take care of licensing issues.
- All you need to do is to pay for the cost of the server, and also for the cost of the connection between the server and the internet-based application.