Before you install Exchange Server 2010 and start connecting your mobile devices, it's critical to make sure the fundamentals are correct and you understand how Exchange Server 2010 fits together. Although you can certainly just buy a server and install Exchange Server with its defaults instead of configuring it by trial and error, spending some time learning the core roles and carefully understanding what your organization needs will help ensure that you've got a solid foundation to build upon, and give you some confidence that what you build will perform as you expect.
This chapter introduces the roles Exchange Server provides and explains what each role does when compared with other roles. The first thing you should understand though, is that a role does not equal an individual server. Roles in Exchange Server separate the functions from one another and can be combined or separated as you need. You could run all the core functions of...