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I’ve been trying to plan my journey to work a little better this week. I drive a distance of about 25 miles each way, and up until recently, I chose my route to be the straightest possible to get onto the A14 highway, which takes me the rest of the way. I fired up Google Earth, and plotted each possible path to find the shortest possible distance (c’mon, I’m not the only one!).

Recently though I decided it was about flow. Gradually, I’ve acquired the knowledge of which traffic lights are timed which way. Where cycle lanes merge into traffic. Which routes require me to turn right too much (US readers: we drive on the other side. Turning right is as much of a pain in the ass for us as left is for you). How best I can avoid slowing down. Choosing roundabouts instead of lights (Apparently there aren’t many of these in the US. You’re welcome to some of ours).

It is quicker to go for the route I know has the least obstacles than the most direct route, but I’ve had to experiment to determine this. Thankfully, when we’re talking about the flow of Exchange messages, you lucky people have William Lefkovics. Knowing enough about the routes that messages take is vital to being an effective Exchange admin, because just like my route to work, you can put this knowledge to work to boost the efficiency of your servers.

In a similar vein, Jaap Wesselius spends some time going through exactly what happens to your Exchange data at the database level – where transactions are stored and how, and the detail of the route they take from user to database.

His article on clustering pretty much breaks the analogy with cycling – a clustered implementation of my route to work might involve multiple passive clones of Simple Talk, and multiple clones of me sent with information to lie dormant until the real one broke. But I guess my clones would keep writing editorials even if I was ill. Jaap’s breakdown of Clustered Continuous Replication is invaluable for anyone that needs to be sure Exchange will stay online.

Hope you find these useful. We are always looking for informed and interesting authors to write for Simple Talk Exchange – if you think you could do it, email me

We want your quick Exchange tips- short cuts through common problems, neat scripts to automate dull tasks, anything that you use and think ‘damn, that’s good admin’. $50 Amazon voucher to our favourite. Ben Lye has secured this prize in last months competition – his tips are here.

War stories are good too – have you ever deleted your bosses mailbox? Dropped payroll details in the Public Folders ‘by mistake’? Crippled a once-mighty organisation by denial of email? We want to hear about it. $50 Amazon voucher if it makes us laugh or cry.

Thanks for reading – if you like Simple Talk Exchange, forward it on to a friend. Remember, we are still giving away Sybex’s Best of Exchange 2007 eBook to new subscribers.

Regards,

Michael Francis

Editor, Simple Talk Exchange