[tonypurewall]

Currently we have a back-end email infrastructure of

- Exchange 2003 hosting 30,000 users
- on a Microsoft cluster of 2 Active nodes and 1 Passive node
- running on Windows 2003 Enterprise Server and Exchange 2003 Enterprise

We wish to implement a BES environmet of

4 BES servers each hosting 500 users
1 SQL server only to service the above BES servers

I would appreciate some advice and recommendations for

1) 4 BES Servers - hosted on Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise?

2) SQL Setup - hosted on Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise?

3) SQL Setup - SQL 2005 Standard or Enterprise?

advice greatly appreciated

thank you

Tony

[gibson_hg]

To be honest noone of them matter. There will be no significant differences between standard or enterprise.

Whatever is more cost effective for you is your best bet.

[hdawg]

1) Standard
2) Standard (unless you plan on doing some native clustering)
3) Standard (unless you need to do some advanced clustering ... which RIM doesn't currently support anyway)

Those answers are based purely on the fact that they're the cheapest and will give you all the functionality needed. If by some reason you can get Enterprise cheaper; get it; you won't lose any functionality.