F5 Solution for Microsoft Exchange 2010 James Hendergart Business Development Manager

F5 Solution for Microsoft Exchange 2010

James HendergartBusiness Development Manager

Helen JohnsonSolution Engineer

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What’s new in Exchange Server 2010?

1. Elevation of Client Access Server (CAS) role• All client connections, regardless of protocol, are

with CAS servers• CAS servers rely on ADC for high-availability

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Exchange 2010 ArchitectureEnterprise NetworkEnterprise Network

ExternalSMTPservers

Edge TransportRouting and

AV/AS

Phone system (PBX or VoIP)

Client AccessClient connectivity

Web services

Hub TransportRouting and

policy

Web browser

Outlook (remote

user)

Mobile phone

Outlook (local user)

Line of business application

MailboxStorage of

mailbox items

Unified MessagingVoice mail and

voice access

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What’s new in Exchange Server 2010?

• Elevation of Client Access Server (CAS) role• All client connections, regardless of protocol, are

with CAS servers• CAS servers rely on ADC for high-availability

• Microsoft recommends hardware load balancing for every Exchange 2010 deployment• ADC recommended over NLB• Includes multi-role Exchange server installations• Includes installations with Microsoft clustering services

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The F5 Solution for Exchange Server 2010

• Prevent these pains– Dropped sessions re-authentication, reconnection– Failed network connections retries, delay– Slow response trapped users

• These capabilities– Health monitoring and intelligent load-balancing– Client persistence– Server off-load– Availability of servers, arrays and sites

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What’s new in Exchange Server 2010?

1. Elevation of Client Access Server (CAS) role• All client connections, regardless of protocol, are with

CAS servers

2. Microsoft recommends hardware load balancing over NLB• Multi-role Exchange server installations• Installations with Microsoft clustering services

Technical white paper on the MS internal Exchange design: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff829232.aspx

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The F5 Solution for Exchange Server 2010• High-availability and superior user response• Site resilience• Reduced time and cost to replicate mail store• SPAM filtering and web client security

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A

D

B

C

F5 Solution for Exchange Server 2010

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Configuration - we have a template for that

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Availability

• Health monitoring– Port/protocol requests– Real-time in memory connection tables

• Intelligent load-balancing– BIG-IP always knows the most available server– Least connection method– See application template

• Cross site availability– Site level health– Prioritized decision tree

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Persistence

• Also known as affinity, or sticky sessions, persistence can help enhance a user’s application experience

• Different types of persistence:– Source IP– Cookie– SSL ID

• Each Exchange client connection type has a recommended persistence method

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Configuring persistence profiles in BIG-IP

Cookie Source IP and SSL ID

LocalTrafficProfilesPersistenceCreate

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Performance - SSL termination

• Reduce cost and overhead of managing certificates by moving them to BIG-IP

• BIG-IP is designed with dedicated chipset for encryption/decryption calculations

• Increase Exchange server CPU utilization and network connections per second

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Security

• Bi-directional proxy• Secure remote access• Pre-authentication• Application layer security for web clients• SPAM filtering

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Multi-datacenter considerations

• Multiple datacenters provides additional options for redundancy and load-balancing– Load-balancing and Failover across locations– DNS management– Secure, accelerated application data synchronization– Seamless integration with systems management tools

• Key enabling functionality– BIG-IP LTM – GTM communication– iSessions– iControl– F5 PRO-Enabled Management Pack

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Summary

• Highest availability through intelligent, hardware-based load-balancing of client connections to CAS servers

• Dramatically increased server processing power through off-loading of SSL, caching, compression and client connection isolation.

• F5 enables cross-site availability and resilience

• Pre-authenticate users in the perimeter network

• F5 devices can be controlled using PowerShell and Management Packs

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Next steps

• Reply to your Coffee Talk calendar invite or your follow-up email to schedule an appointment with your F5 customer team.

• Please complete our 30-second survey and receive your $5 Starbuck’s coffee card!

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Exchange related resources

• Sysmex case study– http://www.f5.com/pdf/case-studies/sysmex-america-cs.pdf

• F5 video demo – how to configure BIG-IP for Exchange 2010– http://www.vimeo.com/album/1537190

• F5 Deployment Guide– http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/f5-exchange-2010-dg.pdf

• F5 Solution page for Exchange Server– http://www.f5.com/solutions/microsoft/exchange

• F5 online user community for Microsoft solutions– http://devcentral.f5.com/microsoft

• Technical white paper on Microsoft’s internal deployment– http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/D/85D61478-8719-4219-96BA-

E5C53DD4F436/0941_ExchangeServer2010ArchitectureTWP.docx

• Load-balancing requirements from Microsoft TechNet– http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff625247.aspx

• Microsoft TechNet wiki– http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/exchange-2010-client-access-array-amp-load-balancing-

resources.aspx