Exchange Servers started in 1993 and outgrown since then. It was built in XENIX which is a version of Linux Operating System licensed by Microsoft from AT&T in the 70’s. to exchange server in April 1993.
The users were around 500 in Exchange server in Jan 1995 which then increased to 32000 in 1996. It was then migrated to beta version and the next version was brought in the market.
The Exchange Server 4.0 was released in 1996 and officially sold to public and was to upgrade Microsoft Mail 3.5. It was utilized by 400 client server mails with one database and 500 directories. Following release version was 5.0 which was released in 1997 introduces Administrator console integrated to SMTP-based networks. It also had an add-on feature known as Internet Mail connector which could directly communicate with server.
Exchange Server 5.5 was then released in 1997 which came in two versions, Standard and Enterprise. There were many differences in storage limit, mail transport connectors and had the ability of cluster servers.
Exchange Server 2000 edition was released in 2000 which many improvements and it’s limitations were reduced compared to Exchange Server 5.5. It supported more than one cluster and increased it’s supported database. Instant messaging support was also includes and the version includes Microsoft Active directory which was unavailable in the previous version. The era was then supported by Exchange Server 2007 which was released in 2003. It was supported on Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. This allowed easy up gradation from one operating system to another. This was mainly used by major organizations which could not afford downtime caused due to dedicated server migrations.
It main feature includes disaster recovery which allowed administrators to bring servers online faster by sending / receiving emails and recovering them from backups. It also provided anti-virus and anti-spam.
This was introduced in two versions such as standard and enterprise. The standard version allowed 75GB of database storage whereas Enterprise edition allowed 16TB and 4 storage group with 5 databases per group. However, it was only compatible with 32 bit version and not install on 64-bit windows server 2003.
The latest version is Exchange Server 2007 which was in the beta version in 2006. It can run on 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows Dedicated Servers. The performance has improved with this version when compared to Exchange Server 2003.
Exchange server 2007 also introduces features such as voice-mail, filter options, web service support, Outlook Web Access new interface.
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