First Look at Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Martin Heller takes a first look at Microsoft's Exchange Server 2010 Beta, noting several usability, reliability, and compliance improvements over Exchange 2007. Top among Exchange 2010's new features are OWA support for Firefox 3 and Safari 3; improved storage reliability; conversation views; mail federation between trusted companies; and MailTips, a sort of Google Mail Goggles for the corporate environment. 'Database availability groups give you redundant mail stores with continuous replication; database-level failover gives you automatic recovery. I/O optimizations make Exchange less "bursty" and better suited to desktop-class SATA drives; JBOD support lets you concatenate disks rather than stripe them into a redundant array.' Exchange 2010 will, however, require shops to upgrade to Windows Server 2008, as support for Windows Server 2003 has been dropped. Microsoft will release technical previews of other products in the suite, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010, in the third calendar quarter."

Comments

Re:And all the admins ask...

[Kamokazi]

I was able to set up a working Exchange 2007 server in 2 days. I had never configured an e-mail server before. I'm not even an MCSA (well MCTS woudl be the new name for it)....really only about halfway to it.

So it's even easier than you say it is :-) But you are absolutely correct...you need a competent admin to do it right (I know I sure as hell didn't do it right...it was just a test box)...they don't necessarily have to be an "E-mail Admin" to do it right, they just need to be competent enough to follow best practice guidelines (and obviously have a basic understanding of how e-mail works...any of your 'MCSE monkeys' should have that).

And that is a big part of why Exchange predominates...it's easily administered, and it has features that nothing else offers on an equivalent level.

Also keep in mind that it's not just the PHB's being resistant to change that stops OSS...it's the fact that Microsoft does a good job of making sure that their stuff integrates with eachother very well (and they don't exactly go out of their way to make sure other stuff can integrate with their products). The reason Exchange was so easy to get up and running for me is due in large part to Active Directory integration, and ISA Server 2006 is basically preconfigured to allow an Exchange server the proper access just by telling it the IP address.