Monthly Archives: April 2009

What’s New in Exchange Server 2010

0
Posted by Christian Pedersen on April 23, 2009 – 19:33
Filed under Exchange 2010

New Rights-Protected E-Mail Functionality with Active Directory RMS

  • Transport rules to apply AD RMS protection to messages based on conditions
  • Persistent protection of attachments in rights-protected messages
  • Support for AD RMS templates
  • An Internet confidential AD RMS template for protection over the Internet
  • AD RMS protection for Unified Messaging voice mail messages

New Transport and Routing Functionality

  • Cross-premises mail routing  – An organization can choose to outsource some of their mailboxes to a hosted solution while maintaining their on-premises deployment. Exchange 2010 allows routing of messages between the on-premises and hosted mailboxes.
  • Enhanced disclaimers – Exchange 2010 lets you add disclaimers that can include hyperlinks, images, and HTML-formatted text. You can also insert Active Directory attributes that are substituted for the sender’s attributes when a disclaimer rule is triggered.
  • Transport rules integration with AD RMS – Exchange 2010 gives you the ability to create rules that require AD RMS protection based on keywords or patterns.
  • Moderated Transport – Exchange 2010 provides an approval workflow for sending messages to recipients. When you configure a recipient for moderation, all messages sent to that recipient must go through an approval process.
  • Shadow redundancy – Messages that are submitted to an Exchange 2010 Hub Transport server are stored in the transport database until the next hop reports successful delivery of the message. If the next hop doesn’t report successful delivery and it fails, the message is resubmitted for delivery.
  • Transport dumpster truncation based on log copy status – When messages that are in the dumpster are replicated to all mailbox databases, they’re removed from the dumpster.
  • Latency SLA management – Exchange 2010 Transport lets you measure service levels delivered relative to your service level agreement (SLA) goals. Exchange 2010 gives you the ability to measure latencies for each hop, as well as end-to-end latency.
  • Transport database improvements – Performance improvements in the Transport database result in reduced database I/O per second (IOPS) per message, which increases message throughput.

New Permissions Functionality

In Exchange 2010, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) has replaced the permissions model that was used in Exchange 2007. RBAC lets you define extremely broad or extremely precise roles and assignments based on the roles of your administrators and users, and the tasks they perform. Access to the cmdlets and parameters required to perform a task is granted by assigning the related RBAC management role to a user or universal security group. If you want to grant an administrator or user the ability to perform tasks in Exchange 2010, you must either add the administrator or user to a universal security group that already has been assigned a specific RBAC role, or you must assign the role directly to the administrator or user.

New High Availability Functionality

Exchange 2010 combines the key availability and resilience features of cluster continuous replication (CCR) and standby continuous replication (SCR) into a single high availability solution that handles both on-site data replication and off-site data replication. Mailbox servers can be defined as part of a Database Availability Group to provide automatic recovery at the individual mailbox database level instead of at the server level. Each mailbox database can have up to 16 copies.

The following features in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) no longer exist in Exchange 2010:

  • Local continuous replication (LCR)
  • Single copy clusters (SCC)

New Messaging Policy and Compliance Features

  • Exchange 2010 compliance features make retention independent of users’ mailbox management and filing habits, and these features ensure retention policies are applied continuously
  • interface for applying retention policies
  • Auto tagging for retention policies
  • Mailbox search features for cross-mailbox search with Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) support
  • New transport rules predicates and actions

New Outlook Web Access Features

  • Favorites in the Navigation Pane
  • Search folders
  • Message filtering
  • The ability to set categories in the message list
  • Options in the Web management interface for Outlook Web Access
  • A side-by-side view for calendars
  • Multi-client language support
  • The ability to attach messages to messages
  • Expanded right-click capabilities
  • Integration with Office Communicator, including presence, chat, and a contact list
  • Conversation view
  • The ability to send and receive text (SMS) messages from Outlook Web Access
  • Outlook Web Access mailbox policies

New Unified Messaging Features

  • Personal auto attendants (call answering rules)
  • Additional language support including in Outlook Voice Access and Voice Mail Preview
  • Enhancements to name lookup from caller ID
  • Voice Mail Preview
  • Messaging Waiting Indicator
  • Missed call and voice mail notifications using text messaging (SMS)
  • Protected Voice Mail
  • Built-in Unified Messaging administrative roles

Web Management Interface

  • Text messaging (SMS) integration
  • Voice messaging integration
  • Mailbox Search
  • Distribution list creation and management
  • Moderation and approval for distribution list submission

New Exchange Core Store Functionality

  • Storage groups are deprecated
  • Mailbox databases are no longer connected to the server object
  • Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) has many improvements for high availability, performance, and database mobility
  • The Store schema has been flattened

New Administration Functionality in the Exchange Management Console

The core EMC refers to new functionality that affects how you use the Exchange Management Console that includes:

  • Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)
  • Organizational Health
  • Community and Resources
  • Command logging
  • Property dialog command exposure

New Administration Functionality in the Exchange Management Shell

  • Remote administration – With the new Shell, you can connect to remote Exchange 2010 servers across the network with only Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3 and Windows Remote Management 2.0 CTP installed.
  • Administrator audit logging – Actions that result in the modification of Exchange organization configuration and other object properties in the Exchange Management Console, the Web management interface, and the Shell can now be logged for later review.

Source: TechNet

Exchange Server 2010 Beta Update & Your Questions

0
Posted by Christian Pedersen on April 18, 2009 – 09:28
Filed under Exchange 2010

Wednesday was a big day for us, and I’m pleased to tell you that the response to Exchange 2010 has been awesome! In the last two days, more than 10,000 people have downloaded the beta. Along and with the 2,000+ educational institutions and 5 million people already testing Exchange 2010 as a service, we are well on our way to delivering the most tested, most solid version of Exchange ever.

If you haven’t had time to download the beta, stop, drop and download. If you don’t have time just now, do the next best thing and check out these reviews:
Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud – eWeek
First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines – InfoWorld
A First Look at Exchange 2010 – Windows IT Pro

I have also seen a lot of interest and questions around Office 2010 and the next milestones for Exchange, so I wanted to jump on here and answer a couple of the burning questions right away.

OWA sounds great. What about Outlook 2010?
As you heard on Wednesday, we are focused on delivering a powerful experience across the PC, phone, and browser. We know everyone lives in Outlook, and that’s where you will see tons of improvements like:

  • The Ribbon and Quick Steps: In Office 2007, the ribbon made commands much more discoverable – now it’s time to bring that same efficiency to Outlook. My favorite part of the ribbon in Outlook is a new feature called Quick Steps. You can set up one-click Quick Steps for the most common email tasks you do every day. For example, my favorite Quick Step helps me see all mail addressed directly to me first – a quick and simple way to manage my email.
  • Speed – It’s just faster. Even with multi-gig mailboxes, Outlook starts up on a dime. Plus, not only is search blazing fast, but you can find what you want again and again with a single click using some of the new tools in the ribbon.
  • Security: Of course, you rely on Outlook for IRM, and we’ve added in multiple layers of security for attachments as well.
  • Calendaring & Scheduling: Organizing meetings with a bunch of busy people can be like solving a Rubik’s cube. In Outlook 2010, you get a "solve" button (figuratively) that can reduce tasks – like scheduling team meetings or replying to emails with a meeting request – to one click.
  • Extensibility: Have those add-ins that you just can’t live without? Outlook will not only continue to support a wide variety of your favorite add-ins, but we’ve redesigned the experience to ensure that no matter how many add-ins you use – starting up, shutting down, and getting things done in Outlook will be faster than ever.

The place to get the real scoop on Outlook is over at the Outlook blog http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/default.aspx.

I want to get my hands on Outlook 2010. Will there be a public beta?
Yes, there will be a public beta. In the third quarter of this year, there is a technical preview in the works. A ‘technical preview’ is marketing-speak for limited beta, so a few tens of thousands of people will be able to get Office 2010 at that time. A technical preview is used to get input in the early development stages, and for those of you attending Tech-Ed, you’ll hear even more about this. After that, there will be a public beta, when everyone and their dog can try Office 2010. Then, with all that awesome feedback, we’ll ship Office 2010 in the first half of next year.

How much will Exchange 2010 cost?
We haven’t announced that yet, but stay tuned for more details in the next several weeks.

Why are you calling it Exchange 2010 if you’re shipping it in 2009?
It’s all about the ‘wave’. Exchange is a critical part of the ‘wave 14′ of innovations, which includes Office, SharePoint and other Microsoft business productivity software. While Exchange is first out of the gate, we are building these products with a common vision for the new world of business and the capabilities organizations need to succeed today and in the future. Plus, saying "twenty ten" sounds way more cool.
Thanks for your help in making Exchange great, and keep your questions coming.

Crystal
Exchange Program Manager

Source: MSExchangeTeam

Exchange Server 2010 – New Management Console Features

0
Posted by Christian Pedersen on April 17, 2009 – 23:06
Filed under Exchange 2010

A lot of additions have been introduced to the Exchange Management Console in Exchange Server 2010. I will shortly cover some of them in this article.

With Exchange Server 2007, the only way to change the diagnostic logging was through the Exchange Management Shell. With Exchange Server 2010 it can be set through the Exchange Management Console and off course the Exchange Management Shell.

image 

Another addition to the Exchange Management Console is two different certificate wizards. One for creating a new certificate, and one for importing an existing certificate.

New certificate:
image

Import certificate:
image

The Calendar Attendant is also introduced to the EMC.
image    

Another really really cool feature introduced in Exchange Server 2010, is that mailbox moves are by default done in "online mode". This means that the Outlook client will not be disconnected during the mailbox move. Once the mailbox move is completed, Outlook 2003/2007 users will be asked to restart Outlook. Very nice :-)

That’s it for now. As mentioned, I will cover more features later..

What’s new in Exchange Server 2010 – Part 1

0
Posted by Christian Pedersen on April 17, 2009 – 07:47
Filed under Exchange 2010

The major change is in High Availability, take LCR, CCR and SCR from Exchange 2007, mix it all together and you have the best of all three! So there is no more LCR, CCR and SCR in Exchange 2010, but it is called Database Availability Group and so yes another acronym: DAG.

The major change is that Windows Failover Clustering is not involved in DAG, the high availability is at database level. You can have up to 16 (!) copies of each mailbox database spread over you mailbox server farm. There are no more storage groups, you now set the databases at organization level and not at server level.

Well that sounds really enterprise/datacenter level, well with just 2 servers you can have high availability! without the need of expensive cluster storage solutions. Copies of databases may be placed on servers that have other exchange servers installed.

Another major improvement that benefits DAG is the 50-70% performance gain in IOPS. So there is no need for expensive fast spindles for storage, you can use direct storage, even desktop class SATA disks. So with this cheap storage you can give your users larger mailboxes. Microsoft even claims you can use the cheaper SATA drives without RAID, since you have copies of the databases on other servers. So now you can have a performing high availability exchange solution at home :-)

But of course DAG works best in a datacenter environment, with 16 copies per database you can have site redundancy spread all over the world.

There has been no announcement yet about the Exchange SKUs, so I don’t know what form of DAG will be available in the standard edition, but LCR was available in Exchange 2007 in the standard edition which requires a manual recovery. I assume that 2010 standard edition will allow at least 1 database copy with automatic recovery support.

Another part of high availability is the new move-mailbox feature: online mailbox move. Now the end user can continue working with their email, reading, sending and receiving, while the administrator moves the mailbox to another server, all just during work hours. At the last stage the end user will expect a interruption, when the last sent and received email is copied over to the new location.

Description of the different functions

Database Availability Group:
A set of Mailbox servers that uses continuous replication to provide automatic recovery from a variety of failures (disk level, server level, datacenter level).

Database-Level Failover:
Exchange Server Database Availability Groups provide automatic failover at the database level, without the complexity of traditional clustering. A database-level disruption, such as a disk failure, no longer affects all the users on a server. Because there is no longer a strong tie between databases and servers, it is easy to move between database copies as disks fail. This change, coupled with faster failover times (30 seconds), dramatically improves an organization’s overall uptime.

Improved Site Resiliency:
Exchange Server Database Availability Groups makes it easier to implement site resilience by simplifying the process to extend data replication between datacenters to achieve site failover. Log files are also compressed to improve transmission time and reduce network bandwidth usage.

Easier Deployment:
Administrators can add high availability to their Exchange environment after their initial deployment, without reinstalling servers. Small organizations can deploy a simple two-server configuration that provides full redundancy of mailbox data along with Client Access and Hub Transport roles. These changes put high availability within the reach of organizations that once considered it impractical.

Integrated Cluster Administration:
Exchange Server Database Availability Groups feature automatic failover without the complexity of traditional clustering. The proven capabilities of Windows clustering are integrated with Exchange and are transparent to the administrator. Administrators no longer need to master clustering concepts or deal with separate administration tools in order to provide enterprise-class uptime.

Backup-less Support:
The Exchange Server Database Availability Group architecture allows log file replay to be lagged, enabling administrators to perform point-in-time database restores without the need for tapes. Organizations can rely on their high availability infrastructure rather than tape backups to recover from failures, and substantially decrease their operating costs.

Transport Resiliency:
Transport servers in Exchange Server 2010 feature built-in protection against the loss of message queues due to disk or server failure. Servers retain a "shadow" copy of each mail item after it is delivered to the next hop inside the organization. If the subsequent hop fails before reporting successful delivery, the message is resubmitted through a different route

Source: Bink.nu

Exchange Server 2010 Beta released

0
Posted by Christian Pedersen on April 15, 2009 – 14:43
Filed under Exchange 2010

image

This is great news….

Over the past couple of years the Exchange Team has been hard at work building Exchange 2010. We are excited to announce an important milestone – we would like to share the Beta release with you today!

We have already discussed that Exchange 2010 was built from the ground up with Software + Services in mind — indeed, more than 5 million users are already enjoying the benefits of Exchange 2010 as a service today. In previous posts we’ve highlighted some of the great new features you can get through Outlook Web Access or Outlook Live, and for developers we have shared information around a managed API that makes it really easy to use Exchange Web Services as a development platform for building custom applications.

Today, I am thrilled to announce that Exchange Server 2010 beta is available to everyone for download worldwide at www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010, so you can see for yourself.

The latest version of Exchange Server includes a wide variety of exciting features that:

  • Help people better manage inbox overload and be more productive
  • Enable organizations to increase operational and deployment flexibility
  • Protect information and meet compliance requirements with the new email archive

Exchange 2010 has so many exciting new features that we put together a video describing many of these!

  • To skip right to the new Exchange 2010 features, start the video at 1:25
  • If you’re most interested in how Exchange will save you time and money, go directly to 6:48

Please download the worldwide beta today!

We’re also going live with the Exchange 2010 Forum today, and monitoring it regularly to collect your feedback.

We hope you find it as exciting and innovative as we do, and the entire team looks forward to your feedback!

Source: MSExchangeTeam

Cluster log in Windows Server 2008

0
Posted by Christian Pedersen on April 8, 2009 – 23:32
Filed under Windows 2008

Can’t find the cluster log in Windows Server 2008 ?  Here’s how to get hold of it.

Creating the Cluster.log:
From one of the nodes of the cluster, open a Command Prompt with Administrator rights.  The simplest command to create the log is to type “cluster log /gen”.  A cluster.log file will be generated and stored in the %windir%\Cluster\Reports directory on each node of the cluster.  Note that with all commands you can use either “cluster” or “cluster.exe” as they have the same functionality.

Here are some commands that can make this even easier:

  • /Copy:<directory> (example: /Copy:logs) 
    This command will take the cluster.log that is generated on each node, and copy it to a single directory.  This makes it incredibly easy to get all the logs for analysis.  One thing to note, the directory that you specify should be a subdirectory under the path which the command prompt is showing.  If you want to save the logs at c:\archive\logs, then you need to set the command prompt to c:\archive and then execute the “cluster log /gen /copy:logs” command. 
  • /Span:<minutes> (example /Span:15). 
    This specifies the number of minutes to go back in time for the log collection.  For instance, you reproduce a problem and you then generate the cluster.log.  If you don’t use this switch, you will get up to several days of history.  Using this switch, you can limit the contents of the cluster.log to only include the last few minutes which you have specified.  So, what if you specified 15 minutes but it was really 20 minutes before?  No problem, generating the cluster.log does not remove any data from the servers.  You just run the command again specifying additional minutes for this /span option.
  • /Node:<node name> (example /Node:”node A”). 
    This command allows the specification of a specific node and the other nodes will not have a log generated.  If this option is not specified, all nodes in the cluster will have a cluster.log generated.  This is particularly useful if not all the cluster nodes are up, or some don’t have the cluster service started, which can cause a long delay with cluster log command execution because it will try to issue the command to those missing servers and will wait for a response when none will be forthcoming.
  • /Level:<0-5> (example /Level:4) 
    The /Level switch can be used to change the logging level being captured.  For Windows Server 2008, this has a default level of 3, which is the equivalent of what is captured by cluster.log in previous versions of Windows Server.  If you change this level to a higher number, more detailed information will be logged, but that means that the .etl file that is capturing the tracing will fill faster and there can be a small impact on system performance.  Setting this level lower than 3 will mean there is less tracing information and it may not be useful if analysis of a problem is needed.  For Windows Server 2008, 5 is the maximum effective level, although the command help notes that the level can be set between 0 and 10.  Any setting over 5 has the equivalent functionally as 5.   The level range was set to 10 to allow for further options if needed in the future.

To generate the cluster.log files and copy them to C:\Temp, run the following command:

Cluster /Cluster:<clustername> Log /Gen /Copy:"C:\Temp"

Example: 
image

More detailed log:
Windows Server 2008 introduced new event and diagnostic channels and Failover Cluster moved to using Event Tracing for Windows.  You can see this new tracing exposed in the “Reliability and Performance Monitor” under “Data Collector Sets\Event Tracing Session\Failover Clustering”

image

The logging is saved in files at %windir%\System32\winevt\logs\Clusterlog.etl

Each time the server is rebooted, a new log file will be used and a number used as an extension of the log name like ClusterLog.etl.001.  Up to 5 log files are kept, so after 5 reboots the older log files will start to be removed.  The default log file is 100 MB (for each .etl file), which can be changed using the command “Cluster log /size:<size in MB>” (example:  cluster log /size:120).  Although 100 MB may seem like a large log file, there is a significant amount of detail being saved for each entry due to this format change and 40 MB provides a reasonable amount of history.  To view the setting for the log file size setting, at a command prompt opened with Administrator privileges execute “cluster /prop”.  That command will list the properties for the cluster, including the “ClusterLogSize” and “ClusterLogLevel” property.

The .etl files themselves are not consumable by any viewer directly, but you can dump the contents into several different formats using tracerpt.exe (this TechNet article has the information on using tracerpt.exe: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490959.aspx).  You can dump the contents to EVTX and view in Event Viewer, or .XML and manipulate the information in many ways.  For instance, you can apply a script that parses the file and provides formatting to a subset of the events.