Application Categorization
Your results from the SLA worksheet determine how you will categorize the application. Figure 3 shows a sample categorization
Figure 3: Sample Application Categorization
The diagram in Figure 4 allows us to categorize the application from the standpoint of availability or level of service.
Database Placement
You may not realize this, but your current Exchange environment is actually offering application hosting options for the user community. By default, access to the existing Public Folder structure is already available. If these folders are on Exchange 2000, you are an ASP! So what service level are you currently providing to your user community on these folders? Several times in our sample application categorization (Figure 3) , we used the classification D for no guarantees. If this is true for your case, you might want to ask yourself if your user community knows this? If not, you might want to let them know.
It is common for departments to take this commodity folder tree and build a dependency on the data and access to the information. Based on a basic ASP model, you should be prepared to offer them an upgrade to a higher access level. Consider the information in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Categorizing by availability or level of service
Commodity Access to Basic Public Folder Access 50MB SLA Class D
Upgrade to Exchange 2000 Additional WebStore Access 250 MB SLA Class C
Upgrade to Exchange 2000 Advanced WebStore Access 7GB MB SLA Class B
Upgrade to Exchange 2000 Dedicated WebStore 7BG+ MB SLA Class A
Class C applications share databases on the web store. This is the first level to which you charge the department. Why? Because additional drive space and SLA costs money to support. The financial aspect is only to show that there is a difference between supported and non-supported as well as the burden of managing additional data.
The Class B Application allows more advanced web store utilities and is an isolated web store in a shared storage group. Class B applications that use Event Sinks or Content Indexing introduce more risks to the other applications and should be better isolated. Moreover, Class B applications can take advantage of deep-traversal because it runs on a separate Top Level Hierarchy (TLH)
The Class A Application is a dedicated server that can be configured as the application requires. There are no preset storage group or database templates. Consider this a totally isolated application either because of extreme risk, extremely high server processing or the need for Global, Timer or Protocol sinks. Crazy security requirements may also dictate the need for a separate server.
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