Scott Schnoll (Sr. Technical Writer on the Microsoft Exchange team) posted an excellent article on his personal blog titled "Exchange 2007: Platforms, Editions, Product Keys and Versions". It's an informative article, and one I really wish I noticed before transitioning my home lab to the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007. Here are the 32-bit limitations from Scott's blog:
There are three things that are not available in the 32-bit version:
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Service Packs. We have no existing plans to develop service packs for the 32-bit version. Seems like there was some internal confusion on this point. Scott has updated his post to reflect the fact that MS will indeed release service packs for the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007.
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Automatic Anti-spam updates from Windows Updates. Only a licensed 64-bit version will be able to get automatic anti-spam updates from Microsoft Update.
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Storage groups and databases. You can have a maximum of 5 databases per server in as many as 5 storage groups on the 32-bit version.
Item 2 ended up causing me immediate pain. You see, I spend quite a bit of time working with, troubleshooting, and blogging about WSUS. I was really looking forward to seeing the anti-spam updates flow between WSUS and Exchange 2007. Not so much anymore :(
But hey - maybe the Exchange product group will send over a 64-bit Acer Ferrari laptop for me to continue my testing :)