We are currently on Exchange 2007 SP1 version 8.2 build 176.2. I know all of the comments i get for this, however, i got the exchange in this state & we were in no position to update the exchage server because 1.we never had "any" backups of the exchange box. 2.all roles are in one box which is a virtual machine on vmware with 2 virtual processors & a 8GB ram, allocated. 3. we have our front end as symantec cloud where all incoming mails & outgoing mails go through. 4. we have 1750 mailbox users 5. 6 storage groups with 1 db in each storage group 6. the breakdown of db size & users per storage group are: Database Users Database Size DB1 257 203GB DB2 76 192GB DB3 469 278GB DB4 273 268GB DB5 377 305GB DB6 285 372GB Kindly note, the above values are based on, no archivals have been done on any of the DBs & Mailboxes. 7. 80% of the above mailboxes connect to our exchange server via POP3, this is mainly because of the internet connectivity of their location is very poor & keeps dropping. Most importantly, its a practise the users are so used to & hence we cannot change this. 8. clients used are outlook 2003, 0utlook2007, outlook 2010, mac machines. This is how I got this Exchange 2007 Box. Now, We have the commvault simpana 9, 1. We are running full backups of each DB on a weekly basis, with a Incremental every other day. with the DB size, it takes almost 8 to 12 hours to run a full backup of a DB. We are now scheduled for an archival of each DB, which will help us make the offline Defragmentation faster and also free up all the white space after the archival, making our backup window smaller. Also, we have been asked to move to the latest Exchange setup, 2010 or 2013. Based on my current environment as mentioned above, which is the best way forward: 1. Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2013 2. The best practises I must follow to keep the DB healthy 3. backup & archival strategy 4. do i need a client access server? 5. the best practises to segregate the roles into seperate boxes? 6. do i need a LCR, CCR or a SCR? 7. ideal, best practise DB size & user count for each storage group/ db? Please help me with your expertise. cheers

1. Exchange 2013 has gone to RTM but it is not yet feature complete and a required hotfix for Exchange 2007 is not yet available, so if you're making the change today, I would go with Exchange 2010. 2. Obtain high quality storage. 3. Your competition is increasingly the cloud vendors (Office 365 and Gmail), and they don't back anything up. You should judge whether or not you back up your databases based on how many copies of mailbox databases you maintain and whether you have business needs that require you to do backups. It could well be cheaper to have three or four servers with copies of your data than it is to back it all up. And then you could offer your users very large mailbox quotas since you'll end up buying large disks and won't need to back them up. 4. Yes, but it can be the same server in many cases. 5. It really depends. In Exchange 2013, it's less necessary than it is in Exchange 2010, but you don't strictly have to separate the roles in Exchange 2010. Most jobs I've done do have the roles separated. 6. None of those exist in Exchange 2010. 7. There is no such thing. It all depends on your requirements, SLA and business needs.Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."