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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."
The invoice for this baby is pretty small compared to your normal MS Exchange Server, it's only 1. But that's not in dollars, that's in first born children. So I'm going to throw out a few strategies for coping with this.
So, like pretending you're a college student, starving African or university staff to get cheap editions of Exchange 2007, there are ways to acquired 2010 at a relatively low cost and I hope this helps you cope with the extreme cost of owning Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 for your enterprise business.
... but that's just the unspoken rule.
Sure the costs don't stop there, you need to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 to use it and there are a few more things you'll need to upgrade if you want to keep the same functionality you have now
My work here is dung.
What database engine is it using, and can we access it via SQL?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I kind of like it when my mail server is, you know, just a mail server. Call me a nut but SMTP + IMAP do everything I need.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Oh nevermind :-)
No mention of junk mail in the article. I'm still waiting for Bill to deliver on his promise of a 'spam free world.'
His first point is you can use it with FF and Safari. Nice, but not a really big deal to most admins.
Then his second favorite feature is that you can do database level real time replication - you know, without having to know about all that REALLY hard stuff, like RAID, or what this SCSI crap is, or backups.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
bundling the operating system? thats what it sounds like if the OS is a requirement....bad move on the part of redmond to make this mandatory in a recession.
this is the part where customers ask the question: if linux users dont have to install a new OS to get the latest mailserver/groupware...why the hell do i???
Good people go to bed earlier.
Wow, it's kind of hard to believe, but there's actually something in this update that sounds like it'd be helpful. I think it's the first update to a Microsoft product in... I don't know... about 8-9 years where the update actually offers me something new that would actually be useful for me.
For those who don't already know, the webmail that is built in to Exchange is actually fairly good, and is one of the early web applications to actually use something like AJAX to give you the feeling of using a desktop application. The only problem is that it has only ever really supported IE, and if you use any other browser, it reverted to a crappy version which was... ok. Not really very good, but yes, it worked.
Anyway, it's possible that I may consider buying an upgrade someday!
Frankly, nearly every option I have ever heard containing the phrase "with Windows Server" has been a terrible idea.
Exchange Server 2007 gave the bird to Thunderbird. Will Server 2010 support Thunderbird or Seamonkey? Or will Linux desktops be second class citizens in an Exchange Server corporate setup?
That's the only feature of interest to me...
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Finally. Sheesh. No reason why this couldn't have been implemented years ago instead of relegating them to OWA Lite.
Yeah, no reason except that it's just one more reason why your desktops don't have to run Windows...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Am I missing something, or has Exchange started to gobble up OS functions now?
You must be new to Microsoft products.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I use OWA with FireFox on Linux.
Its not all that rich but it works just fine. Don't know what this is all about.
Are they going to make the experience the same for both IE and FireFox?
Exmerge has been depreciated for years, primarily due to it not supporting the new PST formats.
In keeping with Exchange 2007's newfound love of PowerShell, you should use the Export-Mailbox and Import-Mailbox cmdlets to replace Exmerge.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
You can setup rules for phone calls. Freaking awesome.
if (Status == b0rking_hot_secretary)
{
if (caller.phonenumber == contacts.wife.phonenumber)
call.redirect("/dev/null");
else if (caller.phonenumber == contacts.otherHotSecretary.phoneumber)
Send3WayInvite(caller);
}
But in all seriousness, it'll be nice to have a rule that auto-directs calls to my cell when I'm out of the office.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Just enable IMAP support on the Exchange server, and it will work with any IMAP email client.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I joined an MS consultancy in 1998 because they were supposedly the foremost developers in NYC of MS Exchange applications. Once I settled in, they told me they were expert enough in Exchange as a platform to know never to develop any apps on it, because it was so awful to develop for and to support. A piece of crap. I've never seen any evidence since then that Exchange got any better as an app platform.
Any clue as to whether the 2010 version will be any better? If it were, I'd expect Outlook/Exchange to take over the Internet. But that was possible over a decade ago, and MS totally blew it since then.
--
make install -not war
Anyone who thinks concatenation is a good thing, much less better than striping...
Concatenation, by itself, would certainly be unwise. I'll give Exchange admins the benefit of the doubt and assume this "concatenation" is in addition to whatever redundancy features are provided.
From the story:
JBOD support lets you concatenate disks rather than stripe them into a redundant array
I find that statement confusing. Why is Exchange, a mail server/collaboration platform/etc., managing storage devices? Is the story conflating Windows Server 2008 features with Exchange, or is Exchange directly responsible for storage devices (like Oracle ASM)?
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
These were depreciated in Exchange07, and I'm presuming that they're still depreciated, but not altogether gone (in 07 you had to install them manually).
There's still a lot (okay, well, some) that depends on MAPI and CDO being available in Exchange.
The FF experience sucks in comparison to IE. The OWA experience is almost exactly like the application itself when you're using IE. In FF it's more like a bad version of Gmail. Sadly I'm forced to use IE for my banking and for OWA. That's it. I'm actually excited to see FF support coming down the road.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I'm fairly sure OpenGroupware.org (or, SOGO, at least) supports everything you've described, and does so via open protocols like CalDAV, IMAP, SMTP, LDAP, and so on.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You misread... That's for the REPLICATED copy. i.e. You keep your live database on RAID 1/0, but you keep the realtime replicated copy on JBOD. With EXCH 2007 microsoft began (for very good reasons) recomending DAS instead of SAN (due to application and database high availablility features of Exchange 2007). Now, half of your DAS modular array units don't require expensive controllers, further reducing your costs without detracting from availability. Since the server fron end no longer needs to be a microsoft Cluster as well, Enterprise Server is no longer a requirement either.
We recently deployed a 20K user solution under Exch2007. We lobied for a modular extensible DAS storage solution, but instead upper management insisted on big iron SAN chassis (2 of them). We spent $450K on disks where we could have spent less than 100K and had the same performance and reliability simply because upper management (and apparently you) have not read or do not understand the new database architecture proposed in Exchange 2007. 2010 improves upon that by removing some server side hurdles while maintaining the same data reliablity.
You're keeping 2-3 local, active, asynchronously replicated (with real time log rollback) copies of your exchange system, with 30 second or less automatic failover that does not disconnect users in the process. Why keep them all on RAID 10 if you can simply fail from one over to the other? The only reason to keep any 1 of them on RAID 10 is simply to keep from failing over the first time! (and you'll recover and be back on the RAID 10 in 24-48 hours and you still have redundancy in log shipping, offsite server replication, and traditional backups to supplement that, all without clusters!
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
"These were depreciated in Exchange07, and I'm presuming that they're still depreciated...i>
Yeah, I hear MAPI and CDO lose 40% of their value the first time you use them. Never treat them as an investment.
Exchange has evolved a lot. Take Exchange 2007 for example. On an internet-facing server, it is quite easy to enable anti-spam rules. Even better, they get updated weekly directly from MS. You can also add your favorite antivirus utility (you will end up paying "enterprise prices for it) to scan incoming and outgoing mail for CYA reasons. You also can add server to server connectors between companies so E-mail between your company and a customer never touches the Internet in the clear.
There is one thing I do wish Exchange 2007 had built in, and that would be some sort of application level backup mechanism for mailboxes. As of now, if you want to back up users, you will need to spring for a third party utility such as Backup Exec, Retrospect, or Microsoft's own Data Protection Manager.
Maybe the suggestion of making the backend of Exchange a SQL Server database is a good one. This way, mailboxes can be handled with the ton of DB tools available.
Honestly. The adoption rate of Exchange 2007 was LOW and slow. Even when SP1 was released (after almost a year delay, btw), we're still stuck with this shitty command line interface that USED to be GUI to do all sorts of fun admin things in. It's a royal PITA to administer. How about an SP2 that will fix seemingly dead issues like OWA support for other browsers, etc? If MS thinks we and other companies that just spent thousands of dollars on the "bleeding edge" 2007 are going to pony up for 2010, they've got a surprise waiting. This is incrtedibly insulting.
I guess Ballmer realized how shitty everything was the company has done over the past 2-3 years since he took over and decided to move on.
You could even script the two together, to identify mailboxes larger than, say, 1 GB and then export items older than 180 days...
Seriously, RTFM.
This is not unique to Microsoft products. Databases have been doing this for a long time. Oracle Database has options for RAW devices and disk access, where redundancy is handled in the application layer by throwing more disks at the problem. You can also stack your layers of redundancy by using Oracle automated storage management to have multiple logical disks while at the same time using an array controller to provide a level of RAID redundancy at the physical layer.
And a point about JBOD being useful for Exchange. In most Exchange environments I have worked with, replication happens at the appication layer, with huge portions of the data store being replicated amongst members of the Exchange Cluster, each with their own copy of the data. While expensive RAID/physical redundancy is a good idea, it is not critical as exact copies of the data store are available elsewhere in the cluster, and mailboxes can be failed over to those members.
And for the people that want a full RDBMS or SQL Server under the hood of Exchange - this is primarily a performance concern. Exchange access to data stores has such a unique profile that ca be modeled to show specific performance profiles that would benefit from a customized data access layer, overall Exchange performance would be hampered by the inclusion of an RDBMS that was designed to respond to a multitude of performance profiles. When you have the luxury of understanding how your application accesses data, it is best to choose (or develop) the data storage subsystem that will reap you the best performance. Here is where I believe Microsoft has the right approach.
One of the most wonderful things about Exchange is how they artificially limit the size of the message store in order to get you to buy the "enterprise" version.
Why pay megabucks for that limitation when others give you 256 TB or more?
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
When all your salesforce wants Their blackberry email and calenders seamlessly synchronized with multiple desktops or notebooks, and when you need to be able to wipe a blackberry remotely when it's lost or stolen, then exchange starts to buy something for you.
Particularly the mobile support and the ability to create meeting notices with people not even on your network is very valuable
Peace, or Not?
with exchange all email is in the database
for Exchange 2003 you had to restore the db and there were ontrack powertools you bought to search the database file.
with 2007 and with 2010 they either have the ability to do this or it's coming in 2010. you just restore the database and search it. want to find all the emails that joe sent to jeff, just put in the search parameters and it will find it all.
no need for imap for mobile clients. if you don't have BES than winmo and iphones just sync the mailbox over the air. no need for a browser, you just use the integrated mail client.
exchange supports online backup so no downtime during backups. log backups mean you can do point in time restores. if you think someone got an email and deleted it right away, just do a point in time restore and search the db for it.
A philosophical question, then: what's coming first - Exchange running in Emacs, or Emacs running in Exchange?
My money would be on Emacs running a virtual machine on which you could install Exchange.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Not only the pricing, but this part is intriguing too:
Outlook protection rules
Automatically triggers Outlook to apply an RMS template to a message before it is sent
I suppose that means that a GPL V3 notice is attached whenever it notices that a user is attempting to email source code.
Take that! you GNU/Linux weenies!