Microsoft officially released Service Pack 3 for Exchange Server 2007, and with it comes support for Windows Server 2008 R2. Exchange 2007 SP3 can be downloaded here.

As I announced back in November, Microsoft released the Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant. Microsoft recently released additional content for the following upgrade scenarios:

• Upgrading from Exchange Server 2007
• Upgrading from a mixed Exchange Server 2003/2007
• New Exchange Server 2010 installation

The Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant, including the abovementioned additional upgrade scenarios, can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010

Microsoft Released Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2. There are over 50 issues that the update rollup fixes. Details on the Update Rollup can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972076.

A post of the MS Exchange Team Blog does a great job of providing guidance on triaging Exchange performance issues related to Active Directory performance, networking, and DNS.

The post can be found here: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/02/03/453931.aspx.

Version 4.5 of the Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator, which can be found here, has been released.

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The Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer (ExPDA) performs an overall topology readiness scan of your environment and provides you with a list of decisions that need to be made before you deploy Exchange Server 2010.

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Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 fixes the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

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In order to enable full support, three updates are required:

• Roll-Up 1 (RU1) for Exchange Server 2010
• MAPI v6.5.8147
• BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.1 Maintenance Release 1 (MR1)

More information can be found here and here.

The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog has started a series of posts that are must reads if you plan to upgrade to Exchange Server 2010. Here’s a list of the posts they’ve published to date:

• Transitioning Client Access to Exchange Server 2010
• Upgrading Outlook Web App to Exchange 2010
• Upgrading Exchange ActiveSync to Exchange 2010

A couple of months after Exchange Server 2010 was released to manufacturing, Microsoft has released Update Rollup 1. The following is a list of issues fixed in Exchange 2010 Update Rollup 1:

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Microsoft Released Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 SP2. There are almost 50 issues that the update rollup fixes. Details on the Update Rollup can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971534 and http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/21/453277.aspx.

Microsoft just released the Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant, which can be found by going to http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010.

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Great post by the MS Exchange Team:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/09/453117.aspx

It’s official, Kevin Allison (GM Exchange Customer Experience) published a post on the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog stating that Exchange 2007 will support Windows Server 2008 R2. The catch, it’s not here yet . There is no specific date provided in his post, but he does state “In the coming calendar year we will issue an update for Exchange 2007 enabling full support of Windows Server 2008 R2.”

For more details, see post on the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog: The fix for installation of Exchange 2007 SP2 with Windows 2008 R2 Domain Controllers is now available.

Since the release of Exchange Server 2010 RC1, there’s been a lot of debate over some ACEs that are added to the AdminSDHolder object by /PrepareDomain in Exchange 2010 RC1. For more information on this, see Exchange 2010 Modification of AdminSDHolder ACL Can Result in Elevation of Privilege and Exchange 2010 RC1 and AdminSDHolder.

A post was added to the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog this morning that confirms that this has been resolved in the RTM version of Exchange Server 2010. More specifically:

• /PrepareDomain no longer applies ACEs granted to Exchange Windows Permissions USG on the AdminSDHolder container.  If /PrepareDomain detects the ACEs granted to Exchange Windows Permissions USG on the AdminSDHolder container, /PrepareDomain will remove them.
• /PrepareDomain no longer applies the extended right ACE User-Change-Password to the Exchange Servers USG on the AdminSDHolder container.  If /PrepareDomain detects this ACE granted to Exchange Servers USG on the AdminSDHolder container, /PrepareDomain will remove it.
• /PrepareDomain no longer applies the extended right ACE User-Change-Password to the Exchange Servers USG on the domain partition.  If /PrepareDomain detects this ACE granted to Exchange Servers USG on the domain partition, /PrepareDomain will remove it.
• /PrepareDomain no longer applies an unscoped DeleteTree and WriteDACL ACEs on the domain partition.  Instead, these ACEs are replaced by scoping them specifically to user and inetOrgPerson class objects.

I compiled a list of Exchange Server 2010 resources, which are currently available. I will try to update this list as I come across additional Exchange Server 2010 resources.

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A post was added to the Microsoft Exchange Team blog yesterday that identifies an issue where Exchange 2007 SP2 Setup fails if all domain controllers are running Windows Server 2008 R2.

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UPDATE: This has been resolved in the RTM version of Exchange Server 2010. Please see Exchange 2010 and Resolution of the AdminSDHolder Elevation Issue for more details.

The PrepareDomain setup phase of Exchange 2010 RC1 adds several Access Control Entries (ACEs) to the Access Control List (ACL) of the AdminSDHolder object. One of these ACEs, Write Property for member, can be used to elevate privileges from Exchange Organization Administrator to Enterprise Admins.

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