Checklist for Evaluating Your Current Environment
The following checklist outlines the physical and logical factors you should take into consideration when assessing your current environment before deploying Exchange.
| Physical plant | |
|---|---|
|
Data center floor space |
|
Rack space |
|
Network sizing |
|
WAN (may need to provision higher bandwidth connections) |
|
Degree of separation between physical sites (latency introduced) |
|
LAN upgrades |
|
Backbone |
|
Modem pools or alternate dial-up |
|
Hardware needs |
|
Servers |
|
Memory |
|
Processor |
|
Storage |
|
High bandwidth network interface cards (NICs) |
|
Routers |
|
Memory |
|
Processor |
|
Switches |
|
Firewalls |
|
Power |
|
Power grid Service Level Agreement (SLA) |
|
Projected power draw |
|
Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or other power-insulating device (generators, etc.) |
|
Designated "hot" site |
| Staffing | |
|---|---|
|
Training on newly introduced technologies and procedures |
|
Augmentation |
|
Administrators |
|
Support staff |
| Geography | |
|---|---|
|
Time zone issues |
|
Languages |
| WAN | |
|---|---|
|
Encapsulation upgrade (asynchronous transfer mode [ATM], etc.) |
|
Optimization (permanent virtual circuit [PVC] for frame relay) |
|
Overall quality of connections |
| LAN | |
|---|---|
|
Encapsulation change (token ring to Ethernet) |
|
Layer 2 device removal or upgrade |
| Network | |
|---|---|
|
TCP/IP end-to-end |
|
IP Hop count between endpoints |
|
Subnetting considerations (Microsoft® Active Directory® directory service site considerations) |
|
Device configuration |
|
Routers and open ports |
|
Switches |
|
Firewalls and open ports |
|
Ports and layer 4 protocols enabled on filtering or blocking devices |
|
All encryption and decryption operations |
|
All format-change operations (for example, other mail gateways and X.400 connectors) |
|
remote procedure call (RPC) connectivity |
|
network basic input/output system (NetBIOS) |
|
Public key infrastructure (PKI) |
|
Virtual private network (VPN) |
|
Shared dependencies between Internet Information Services (IIS), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) |
|
DNS |
|
Windows® Internet Name Service (WINS) |
| Network operating system | |
|---|---|
|
Shared dependencies between DHCP, NTLM, NTLMv2, and LM |
|
Windows NT® Server version 4.0 domain structure: Trusts, primary domain controllers, backup domain controllers |
|
Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server™ 2003 Active Directory |
|
Forest structure |
|
Domain structure |
|
Migration |
|
Site structure |
| Security | |
|---|---|
|
Kerberos |
|
Migration |
|
Security principles |
|
Security identifier (SID) history |
| Directories | |
|---|---|
|
Migration |
|
Active Directory Connector |
|
Meta directories |
| Administration | |
|---|---|
|
Migration |
|
Permissions delegation |
|
Management |
For more information see Understanding Your Current Network Environment.