New Features in Exchange Server 2010

Exchange Server 2010 beta has been released and I am sure many of our administrators started to make their hand dirty with Exchange Server 2010 lab. In my previous article I was demonstrating on Exchange Server 2010 Installation and also we have noticed overview of certain features. In this article I am going to focus on new features in Exchange Server 2010.

Ok before we could get into the exchange server 2010 features, those who are new to exchange let me inform you all that Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007 are still holding the same functionality and principle like in Exchange Server 2010 still we have the concept of Mailbox, CAS, HUB, Unified Messaging & Edge Server Role. Still the mailflow concept is remain same in Exchange Server 2010 compare to Exchange 2007. The only things which has been changed are improvement in performance and lots of new features which can be minor or major changes.

1.    Exchange Server 2010 Edition Offer:

Exchange Server 2010 still has the same offer as like we had in previous version like Standard and Enterprise Edition.

• Standard Edition can host upto 5 databases per server
• Enterprise Edition can host upto 100 databases per server.

The licensing factors will be predefined by product key mode. You don’t require to upgrade the entire exchange binaries to enterprise edition, just simply type the Enterprise Edition Product Key and restart the Exchange Information Store Service. So if any body have any trial version running they don’t need to uninstall the exchange all they need is they need to get the standard\enterprise product key which will make those necessary changes without any additional configuration or reinstallation.
Note: You can upgrade from lower version (Trial\Standard) to higher version (enterprise Edition) but you can’t downgrade it back from enterprise edtion.

Exchange Server 2010 comes with  two types of  Client Access License (CAL) versions:

• Standard CAL – This CAL is general version which provide the access to e-mail, calendaring, OWA and ActiveSync .
• Enterprise CAL – This is an additional license which will  provide Unified Messaging, Forefront Security, online archiving and hosted Filtering for anti-spam and anti-virus functionality.

Note : There is no 32-bit edition available for Exchange Server 2010.

2.    Administration Improvement:

a.    New Features in the Organization Level:

Many Times there will be a requirement of sharing free busy information, moving the mailbox, OWA customized policy settings  , whenever there is connection between two different organization and we needs to have some sort of connectivity to share out the common data, meetings and it should be more secured. Exchange 2010 came up with certain Wizards configuration which can help us to achieve the connectivity mode for sharing those data.

• New Federation Trust wizard:   This trust is a prerequisite for enabling calendar free/busy sharing or federated delivery between two Exchange organizations, or allowing users to share their calendar and contacts with external recipients.
• New Organization Relationship wizard:   Use this wizard to create a relationship with an external Exchange 2010 organization for the purpose of sharing free/busy information, securing delivery of cross-premises e-mail using federated delivery, and moving mailboxes between on-premises Exchange servers and Microsoft Office Outlook Web App.

Figure 1:

• New Sharing Policy wizard:   Use this wizard to create a sharing policy to regulate how users inside your organization can share calendar and contact information with users outside the organization. For details, see Create a Sharing Policy.

Figure 2:

• New Outlook Web App Mailbox Policy wizard:   Use this wizard to create an Outlook Web App mailbox policy to apply a common set of policy settings, such as attachment settings. Outlook Web App mailbox policies are useful for applying and standardizing settings for specific groups of users

Figure 3:

b.    New Feature in Server Configuration Mode:

• Managing Diagnostic Level through GUI: Initially when Exchange 2007 was released it was quite challenging for us to do troubleshooting because we need to increase the diagnostic logging level through powershell and that time the powershell was totally new for us. Till the time Exchange 2007 Service pack 2 released we don’t had any option to increase the diagnostic level rather then executing through powershell. Now in Exchange 2010 Microsoft set the diagnostic logging option through GUI. Inroder to do that:
   Open Exchange Managment Console
   Expand Server Configuration
   Select the respective Exchange Server and from the action pane click on "Manage Diagnostic Logging Properties"

Figure 4:

• <:od>Certificates Tab: As you all know that Exchange 2007 has its own certificate by default. So whenever we are installing the exchange and then try to access the OWA we need to use https:// . Now Exchange 2010 also have the same stuff nothing changed but in the real time we don’t stick with the default certificate most of the time we use to go with third party vendor certificate which we use to import or renew it based on the requirement. So whenever we use to perform this task it will bit challenging for us because we need to execute the command from Powershell and second thing which i use to think it as a part of my challenge is if we have Windows Server 2008 on which we have IIS and exchange even that make me lots of concern – just because it was new technology. Now with Exchange 2010 you can view, assign, import and renew the certificates through GUI
   Inorder to do this:
  o Open the Exchange Management Console
  o Expand Server Configuration
  o Select the Exchange Server
  o From the action Pane choose the appropriate certification options

Figure 5:

 

c.    New Feature in Recipient  Configuration Mode:

• SendMail (Mailflow Testing) : Sendmail is the new feature which is being introduced in the Exchange 2010. This is going to be one of the coolest features for testing the mailflow issue. Still I remember those days where i use to send an test email through my outlook. Now if we want to send a test email you don’t require to send it through the outlook or owa, all you need to do is
   Open Exchange Managment Console
   Expand Recipient Configuration
   Expand Mailbox
   Right the particular user mailbox and click on SendMail or select that particular user mailbox and from the action menu click on Send mail

Figure 6:


 

•  Archive Mailboxes: Archive Mailbox aka personal archive allow you to store the email into the archive folders. This solution was invented inorder to eliminate the PST mode because in PST mode there were several challenges like user level control, risk of data loss, lots of manual effort which needs to be done on the end-user workstation end.
   Inorder to enable the archive option:
   Open Exchange Management Console
   Expand Recipient Configuration
   Select the appropriate users and from the action pane click on “Enable Archive”
  Note : Inorder to enable this option you require Enterprise CAL. By default it will have 2 years of policy. Which can be reduced to 1 year or more than that.

Figure 7:
 

  

• Resource Scheduling: New  tabs for configuring calendaring and scheduling
• Move requests: Move request is not a new feature it is just a replacement name for “Move Mailbox”. Inorder to do the move request
   Open Exchange Management Console
   Expand Recipient Configuraiton
   Click on Mailbox
   Select the mailboxes and click on either “New Local Move Request” or “New Remote Move Request”

Figure 8:

 
d.    Organization Health: This is new buit-in functionality which will provide you overall the health status of Exchange Organization. This can be viewed or even you can generate a report on this
Figure 10:

 
e.     Role Based Access Control : Exchange 2010 uses the Role Based Access Control (RBAC) permissions model on the Mailbox, Hub Transport, Unified Messaging and Client Access server roles to control what resources your administrators and users can access.

f. New Move-Mailbox functionality : In Exchange 2007 whenever administrator requires to move the mailbox he needs to move the mailbox when the user is unavailable otherwise there will be disruption in his mail access. With the Exchange 2010 Administrator can move the mailbox at any given point of time there will no more destruction in his mail access.

g. Connect Remote Exchange Management Shell to an Exchange Server : As you all know Exchange 2007 depends upon the powershell for any sort of action whether we are executing from GUI or powershell. There are still certain task which can be carried out only by powershell and inorder to do that we need to login to exchange server for completing the execution. In Exchange 2010 by having the remote Exchange management shell it will connect to exchange server remotely through which we can perform any sort of function .

3.    Core Store Functionality:

•  Drastic schema improvement as it will create Less tables & indexes eventually will get better performance i.e reduction of 70% IOPS
• Database page size from 8KB to 32KB
• No More Storage Concept : The very interesting and major changes which has been made in this product is the Exchange Database no more relies on Exchange Server level. The database has been moved to Organizational Level  means no more server storage group concept. There are several advantages of it one of the example is New high availability functionality which will not only reduce the configuration  challenges but also reduce the cost factor for a server.

Figure 11:

 

4.    High Availability Functionality:

Exchange 2010 high availability functionality has been one major point of attraction in terms of new feature.

• Reengineered the concept of continuous replication technology by inventing new mode of cluster called as “Database Availability Groups” which support upto 16 copies.
• Increment Deployment : Anytime you can configure Database Availablity Group on any exchange server.
• Backup-less Exchange Organization : Since we have the capability of 16 copies we can reduce the backup process because if one server fail another server is ready to take the ownership
• Database Mobility – Multiple server role can co-exist
• High Availability can be build at any time
• No more to be an expert in cluster : All you need to do is enable the DAG from the exchange management console it will create the database availability and cluster performance will be take care by exchange server itself so you don’t require to have addition cluster knowledge.
• No more LCR, CCR, SCC, and SCR

Figure 12:

Will talk more on the high availablity in my upcoming article.

5.    New Functionality in Hub Transport Server Role:

• Transport Database improved  which increase performance & reduce IOPS  per message
• Shadow Redundancy : Transport Dumpster was introduced in Exchange 2007, the main functionality of Transport is to store the database when any failover arise between the mailbox store so that active mailbox store server will first contact the transport dumpster to collect the missing email however in that sequence also there was a potential of data loss like during the time of failover  there might be a mail transmission flowing between the exchange hub transport server to mailbox server and during that particular time if any failover happen then there is a chance of loosing the data. In Exchange 2010, Microsoft introduced the new feature called as Shadow Redundancy which will ensure that unless & until the messages are committed to the mailbox database or to the next hop it won’t delete those email in other word it will store the data until the next hop commit those particular transaction successfully.
• Enhanced Disclaimer – Support HTML Format, Images & hyperlink
• Transport rules integration with AD RMS (Right Management Service) - used for restricting access to rights-protected content to authorized users only.
• Moderated Transport provides approval functionality before the message reach out to recipient.
• MailTips : MailTips provide extra information that's displayed to senders while they're composing e-mail messages. They provide information about the messages such as details about the recipient and their availability, or reasons the message wouldn't be delivered. For example, if the person the message is addressed to is out of the office, senders will be informed about this while they're composing the message.
• Incremental Edgesync : This incremental edgesync feature will improve the performance of the server and even reduce the network pressure because initially in exchange 2007 the synchronization will between the hub and edge in mode of full information. In Exchange 2010 the synchronization will arise based on the changes happen after the last synchronization.
• Federated Delivery : An organization can choose to outsource some of their mailboxes to a hosted solution while maintaining their on-premises deployment.

6.     New Functionality in CAS Server Role:

• Outlook 2007 or later version will no longer connect to Mailbox Server (MAPI).This is will increase performance, as CAS is a middle tier which will be a single common path due to which User will no longer be aware when a failover occurs .

7.     New functionality in UM

• Personal auto attendants (call answering rules) : In Exchange 2007 we had a standard answering rule by automated machine, now in this Exchange 2010 it can be customized.
• Additional language support including in Outlook Voice Access and Voice Mail Preview
• Messaging Waiting Indicator
• Missed call and voice mail notifications using text messaging (SMS)

8.    Outlook  Live aka Outlook Web Access:

• Any browser can support outlook live : Before Exchange 2010 we had a challenge of getting complete features or rich text format output while browsing the OWA from any sort browser apart from IE. Now it has been enhanced in much more rich flexibility format whether you are opening from IE, Safari or Mozilla

Figure 13:
 

• ECP (Exchange Control Panel) – create & manage DG, message tracking, Users creation, modifying AD attributes. This will reduce the task of administrator to modify certain users attribute because user will have their control on their profile. And also Administrator can create a user account through OWA

Figure 14:

• Search folders and Favorites are included in the navigation pane

 Figure 15:

• You can now send text (SMS) messages from OWA 2010
• OWA 2010 now integrates with Office Communicator, so you can take advantage of its capabilities, such as seeing presence of colleagues on your contact list, sending and receiving instant messages, and more

Stay Tune lots more to come

Reference Source:

What's New in Exchange 2010
Microsoft Exchange

Upcoming Article:

High Availability in Exchange Server 2010 - DAG