Microsoft has released a document that contains high-level guidance for properly scaling and deploying a multi-tenant Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 solution. It includes details of testing performed in Microsoft labs to validate the scalability of the product and suggests methods that can be used during the design and deployment process to mitigate potential risks associated with such solutions.
The document can be downloaded here.
As you may have heard already, today Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Exchange Server 2010. SP2 includes the following changes:
Exchange Server 2010 SP2 also includes fixes for known issues, including those included in:
Here are some links to additional information relating to Exchange Server 2010 SP2:
Great post on The Exchange Team Blog that speaks to Exchange 2010 Transaction Log Capacity Planning. The post can be found here.
The Exchange Team Blog posted a good article that Demystifies Exchange 2010 SP1 Virtualization. The article covers:
This download includes the Exchange Server Active Directory Schema Reference, which provides information about the changes that Microsoft Exchange Server makes to the Active Directory schema when it is installed. The Exchange Server Active Directory Schema Changes Reference includes changes made by Exchange Server 2010 SP1, Exchange Server 2010 SP2, Exchange Server 2010, Exchange Server 2007 SP3, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007, and Exchange Server 2003.
The Exchange Server Active Directory Schema Changes Reference can be downloaded here.
Microsoft has released a white paper that discusses the considerations when migrating from Exchange Public Folders to Office 365. This is especially important since Exchange Online does not support customer usage scenarios for Public Folders.
The white paper can be found here.
Microsoft recently updated the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant to include “Cloud Only” Deployments. Effectively, you can now feed the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant some inputs regarding your current environment, and it will guide you to documentation on moving to Office 365.
Exchange Server 2010 provides the ability to place a mailbox on retention hold or legal hold, which each serve a different purpose. The Exchange Team Blog has a great post that details the functionality provided by both, which can be found here.
Good read for those looking to share Free/Busy information in a Hybrid deployment (Exchange On-Premise and Exchange Online): .Exchange Hybrid Deployment Configuration Tips: Sharing Free/Busy Information
Another great post on the Exchange Team Blog that provides insight into Exchange Server Short URLs, which can be found here.
As you may have heard, Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Rollup Update 4 was released in June, pulled shortly thereafter, and then re-released again in July. The Exchange Team Blog has a post which provides an explanation of why all of this occurred. The post can be found here.
The Microsoft Exchange team has produced a new portfolio of videos designed to give customers a fundamental technical education on Exchange Server 2010. There are currently seven videos in the series covering the following topics:
Each video runs 20-30 minutes long and includes an overview of the workload as well as a technical demonstration of 3-4 core scenarios related to that workload. The “Exchange Server 2010 Technical Video Series” is hosted by Ann Vu and presented by subject matter experts from the Microsoft Exchange team. You can find these videos on the front page of Exchange Server TechCenter on TechNet.
The Exchange Server Deployment Assistant has been updated to include support for configuring rich coexistence (also known as “hybrid deployment”) for organizations interested in maintaining some users on-premises with Exchange 2010 and some users hosted in the cloud by Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises. This scenario is in addition to the existing support for configuring rich coexistence between on-premises Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 organizations and Office 365.
The new coexistence information for the Exchange 2010 environment is only available in English at this time and requires that your existing Exchange 2010 servers are updated to Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
The Exchange Server Deployment Assistant allows you to create Exchange Server 2010 on-premises configuration and deployment instructions that are customized to your environment. It asks you a small set of simple questions and it provides a checklist with instructions that are designed to deploy or configure Exchange 2010 based on your answers. In addition to the online checklist, you can even print a PDF of your checklist.
The Exchange Server Deployment Assistant can be downloaded here. Additional details on the update can be found here.
The Exchange Team Blog has a great post where they try to address Exchange 2010 High Availability misconceptions. It’s definitely worth a read. The post can be found here.
Microsoft has released an updated Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator, which is a tool to help you lay out your database copies correctly. The updated version (v16.5) includes Database Copy Distribution and can be downloaded here.
The Microsoft Exchange team announced Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2010 today. SP2 will be available the second half of this year, but there is some information on what we can expect in SP2 for Exchange Server 2010. Here’s a list of the new features and capabilities that will be included:
The Microsoft Exchange team recently enhanced its position on virtualization. Most notably, the Unified Messaging Server Role is now supported with Exchange Server 2010 SP1 and later. In addition, combining Exchange 2010 DAGs with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root servers, is now supported. The announcement was made in a post on the Exchange Team Blog, which can be found here.
The Best Practices for Virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V whitepaper, which is designed to provide technical guidance on Exchange server roles, capacity planning, sizing and performance, as well as high availability best practices, was also released.
The MS Exchange Team Blog has a post to describe which versions of Exchange are supported to run on Windows 2008 R2 SP1. The post can be read here. According to their post, they’ve tested Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and the following versions of Exchange are supported to run on Windows 2008 R2 SP1:
They also mention that Exchange 2007 was not supported to run on Windows 2008 R2 at all before Exchange 2007 SP3 release.
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:
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.
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.
Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2010 fixes the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles: