Exchange Licensing for Site with Front and Back end

Here's an interesting tidbit. Apparently, CDW's Microsoft Licensing sales reps have been told that if your back end is running Exchange 2003 Enterprise, that your front end must as well. Some Microsoft sales reps are telling the same story as well.

Well, I got word from KC Lemson (through my brother) that this is not true. That it's perfectly legal to run Standard on the front end and Enterprise on the back end. Apparently, this wasn't the case with 2000 as front end/back end functionality wasn't available in Standard back then.

So save yourself $2200 or whatever it is when setting up your Exchange organization in this manner and get Standard for your front ends, unless you need Enterprise to do clustering or for other features only supported on Enterprise.

Comments

[Rob Kessler]

I just spoke with MS licensing on this issue. The person I spoke with directed me to KB article 818476 which confirms this as well.

[KC Lemson]

If you have a name of a Microsoft employee who gave you this information, please pass it along to me so I can correct it: kclemson AT microsoft DOT com.

[Brian Hampson]

Thanks for this post, and Rob's comment. Someone had told me the same misinformation, and I was glad I could easily find the referenct to the KB which allowed me to direct management to the truth.

Cheers!