Microsoft and HP have announced the availability of the HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.
So what is the E5000? In Microsoft’s words:
The E5000 is a solution which incorporates everything required to run Exchange Server 2010. The solution has been jointly engineered by both companies, and includes (in a single piece of hardware) the following:
- Two blade servers
- Direct attached storage disks
- Redundant networking and power
- Pre-loaded and preconfigured Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 SP1
- HP’s 3 year, 24×7 hardware and software support
The target market is customers with 250-15000 mailboxes who need an on-premise Exchange system that is quick and easy to deploy. The HP E5000 is positioned as a low cost way to deliver large mailboxes (a choice of 1Gb or 2.5Gb per mailbox), boasts a deployment and configuration of just a few hours, and takes up mere 3RU of rack space for the smallest capacity unit (with additional storage expansion available).
Reading the marketing materials for the E5000 makes me think that it could be a good drop-in option for remote office locations that don’t have enough bandwidth to support their clients connecting to a central Exchange 2010 system, but who also need some HA.
Considering that scenario would rule out replicating databases offsite with a Database Availability Group my thoughts are that the solution is missing simple backup solution. The addition of some more storage and a DPM 2010 server might be something that completes this solution well.
Question, is the E5000 a possible fit for us? we are using Network Solutions as our email provider. We have 8 warehouse locations. 5 in Southern California and 4 in Arizona, near Phoenix. We have approximately 300 emial addresses and probably 40% of the users average in excess of 125 emails per day, in and out, and have a PST file between 15GB and 20GB. We do a fair amount of file and report transferring internally as well as to our customers.
We have looked at hosting our own email internally but due to some budget constraints and not having enough IT resources, we have push that project into the future.
I have been trying to put the pieces together for this offering by reading the available information from the Internet but haven’t been able to get the whole picture set in my mind.
Hopefully you cna shed some light as to whether we are a candidate to seriously consider an HP E500 Exchange Server 2010 environment or not.
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