Exchange Server Licensing Scenario

All Exchange Server 2010 deployments will require both client and server licenses for Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008/2008 R2. Pictured is a large enterprise deployment of Exchange Server 2010 supporting e-mail as well as voice mail and voice access to e-mail.

Since a deployment involving many thousands of users likely requires the mailbox database scalability capabilities of Exchange 2010 Enterprise Edition, each of the four mailbox servers (top left) shows an Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise Edition (EX EE) license. Also, all four mailbox servers require a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (WS EE) license because Exchange 2010’s new mailbox high-availability capability, called a Database Availability Group, requires the clustering capability that is built into Windows Server Enterprise (or Datacenter), but not into Windows Server Standard.

Only mailbox servers ever need EX EE, and each of the unified messaging servers (which integrate with a private branch exchange [PBX] phone system to take voice-mail messages and place them in a user’s inbox), hub transport servers (which route messages between Exchange Servers inside an organization and enforce filtering and other policies), client access servers (which provide and manage browser, mobile device, Outlook client, and Post Office Protocol 3/Internet Message Access Protocol client connections), and edge transport servers (which filter incoming Simple Mail Transfer Protocol mail traffic from the Internet for viruses and spam and transfers messages leaving the organization out to the Internet) can use the less expensive Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition (EX SE) license and work fine running on Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Standard Edition (WS SE). Not pictured are Active Directory domain controllers, which would also have to be licensed for Windows Server.