| Concepts and Planning | << | >> |
|---|
Before you configure the Internet News Service and set up newsgroup public folders, you should make initial preparations. For example, you should determine how much disk space you will need for the newsgroups you want to make available in your organization. You should also contact an Internet newsfeed provider and exchange information, such as the address of your Microsoft Exchange Server computer and your newsfeed provider's USENET host computer.
Before you configure your newsfeed, plan your system requirements by considering the following:
Network throughput A USENET newsfeed can send hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes of data across your network. Therefore, make sure that your Internet connection has the bandwidth to support a newsfeed without disrupting other network traffic, such as e-mail.
Storage space The Microsoft Exchange Server computer running the Internet News Service must have enough disk space to support your newsfeed. To determine this, you should consider the size of the newsfeed and whether age limits will be set on newsgroup public folders. The daily volume of a full USENET newsfeed is more than 1.7 gigabytes, or 200,000 messages.
Load balancing The Microsoft Exchange Server computer running the Internet News Service should be able to support the number of users you expect to be accessing the newsgroup public folders. You should also consider whether you can distribute the load on the server by replicating the newsgroup public folders to other servers. Another consideration is that NNTP clients, unlike Outlook users, do not have transparent access to public folders on multiple servers. The client must be configured to connect directly to a server that has a replica of the newsgroup public folder the user wants to access.
Public folder replication The directory and public information store replicate public folder changes on a scheduled basis. Whenever a new public folder is created on a server, the resulting change in the public folder hierarchy is replicated to all other servers in the organization. If your network topology includes remote Microsoft Exchange Server sites that are connected over low-bandwidth connections, when you set up a newsfeed, make sure that the connections do not become saturated with replication messages. If the newsfeed includes a large number of newsgroups, it may be necessary to phase in the new folders over several days to prevent a flood of replication messages that could saturate your network.