Microsoft Exchange Server - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative

Collaborative software

Collaborative software is computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals...

application product developed by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

products and is used by enterprises

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

using Microsoft infrastructure products. Exchange's major features consist of electronic mail

E-mail

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, calendaring, contacts and tasks; that work with Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

on PC and Mac, wireless synchronization of email, calendar, contacts with major mobile devices and browser-based access to information; and support for data storage

Data storage

Data storage can refer to:* Computer data storage; memory, components, devices and media that retain digital computer data used for computing for some interval of time....

History

Planning the migration from Microsoft's internal "legacy XENIX

Xenix

Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed to Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually superseded it with SCO UNIX ....

-based messaging system" to the Exchange Server environment began in April 1993, and by January 1995 some 500 users were running on Exchange Server Beta 1. By April 1996 32,000 users were migrated to that environment.

Exchange 1.0

Windows Messaging

Windows Messaging, initially called Microsoft Exchange, is an e-mail client that was included with Windows 95 , 98 and Windows NT 4.0.In Windows 98, it is not installed by default, but available as a separate program in the setup CD....

, initially called Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Exchange Client

Microsoft Exchange Client was a multi-purpose messaging product useful for managing e-mail. It was the native and bundled client for Microsoft Exchange Server up to version 5.0, later superseded by Microsoft Outlook....

, is an e-mail client that was included with Windows 95

Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...

(beginning with OSR2), Windows 98

Year 98 was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Traianus...

, and Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...

. (In Windows 98, it is not installed by default, but available as a separate program in the setup CD.) Microsoft Exchange gained wider usage with the release of Windows 95, as this was the only e-mail client that came bundled with it. Exchange was included throughout later releases of Windows up until the initial release of Windows 98, which by then also included Outlook Express

Outlook Express

Outlook Express is an email and news client that is included with Internet Explorer versions 4.0 through 6.0. As such, it is also bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003, and is available for Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95 and Mac OS 9...

4.0.

The original version lacked support of Internet mail (SMTP and POP3). They are only available with the separate Microsoft Plus!
Microsoft Plus!
Microsoft Plus! was a commercial operating system enhancement product by Microsoft. The last edition is the Plus! SuperPack, which includes an assortment of screensavers, themes, and games, as well as multimedia applications...

pack.
HTML e-mail was shown in such a way that the message contained an *.ATT or *.htm attachment, which had to be saved and then viewed in a browser, as MS Exchange did not have support for HTML-formatted messages. Similarly, e-mail that did not use traditional message formatting was delivered in the form of text attachments with the *.ATT extension, which could be opened through Notepad. These files were in turn saved in the active Temp directory and some sensitive e-mail could therefore have been made available for other users to see.
International characters were unsupported. Some e-mail that was sent with a non-ASCII or non-7/8-bit character set, was shown in the form of text attachments, which had to be saved and then read in a web browser, with the browser's text encoding set for a specified code page.
Microsoft Fax, also called Microsoft at Work
Microsoft at Work
Microsoft at Work was a short-lived effort promoted by Microsoft to tie together common business machinery, like fax machines and photocopiers, with a common communications protocol allowing control and status information to be shared with computers running Microsoft Windows. Similar efforts for...

Fax (AWF), was the fax component to provide Send-and-Receive Fax capability; sent and received faxes were stored in the same .pst
.pst
In computing, a Personal Storage Table is an open proprietary file format used to store copies of messages, calendar events, and other items within Microsoft software such as Microsoft Exchange Client, Windows Messaging, and Microsoft Outlook...

file as other messages, a first attempt at unified messaging
Unified messaging
Unified Messaging is the integration of different electronic messaging and communications media technologies into a single interface, accessible from a variety of different devices....

by Microsoft. It also provided the ability to act as a fax server
Fax server
A fax server is a system installed in a local area network server that allows computer users whose computers are attached to the LAN to send and receive fax messages...

, a capacity not available in later versions of Windows until Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

.

In 1996, Microsoft Exchange was renamed to Windows Messaging

Windows Messaging

, because of Microsoft's release of another Exchange product which was meant for servers. Windows Messaging had two branches of successors:

In software bundled with Windows itself, these were Internet Mail and News in Windows 95 (and bundled with Internet Explorer 3
Internet Explorer 3
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 is a graphical web browser released on August 13, 1996 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997 for Apple Mac OS . It began serious competition against Netscape Navigator in the first Browser war...

), which was succeeded by Outlook Express 4.0 in Windows 98 (bundled with Internet Explorer 4.0
Internet Explorer 4
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 is a graphical web browser released in September 1997 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for Apple Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It".It was one of the main participants of the first...

in Windows 95) and throughout newer Windows systems. These did not use the .pst file type.
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

became the professional-grade and more direct successor of MS Exchange Client, which still uses the .pst file type. Because Microsoft Outlook used the same basic Windows Messaging profile, account, and e-mail settings (MAPI), Microsoft Exchange users not familiar with it may have thought that Outlook duplicated those settings and made copies of all their mail while they were trying out the new Microsoft Outlook 97. Thus, some MS Exchange users could have unknowingly deleted all their e-mail, thinking it was a copy, as Microsoft Outlook did not have any front-end feature to notify users that it was actually using the same MS Exchange / Windows Messaging account.

Exchange Server 4.0

Exchange Server 4.0, released on June 11, 1996, was the original version of Exchange Server sold to the public, positioned as an upgrade to Microsoft Mail

Microsoft Mail

Microsoft Mail was the name given to several early Microsoft e-mail products.-Mac Networks:The first Microsoft Mail product was introduced in 1988 for AppleTalk Networks. It was based on InterMail, a product that Microsoft purchased and updated. An MS-DOS client was added for PCs on AppleTalk...

3.5. The original version of Microsoft Mail

Microsoft Mail

(written by Microsoft) had been replaced, several weeks after Lotus acquired cc:Mail

Cc:Mail

cc:Mail is an obsolete, store-and-forward LAN-based e-mail system originally developed on Microsoft's MS-DOS platform by Hubert Lipinski in the 1980s. At the height of its popularity cc:Mail had about 21 million users.-Message store:...

, by a package called Network Courier, acquired during the purchase of Consumer Software Inc. in April 1991. Exchange Server was however an entirely new X.400

X.400

X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that define standards for Data Communication Networks for Message Handling Systems — more commonly known as "email"....

-based client–server mail system with a single database store that also supported X.500

X.500

X.500 is a series of computer networking standards covering electronic directory services. The X.500 series was developed by ITU-T, formerly known as CCITT, and first approved in 1988. The directory services were developed in order to support the requirements of X.400 electronic mail exchange and...

directory services. The directory used by Exchange Server eventually became Microsoft's Active Directory

Active Directory

Active Directory is a directory service created by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems. Server computers on which Active Directory is running are called domain controllers....

service, an LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol network...

-compliant directory server. Active Directory

Active Directory

was integrated into Windows 2000

Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...

as the foundation of Windows Server domain

Windows Server domain

A Windows domain is a collection of security principals that share a central directory database. This central database contains the user accounts and security information for...

Exchange Server 5.0

On May 23, 1997, Exchange Server 5.0 was released, which introduced the new Exchange Administrator console, as well as opening up "integrated" access to SMTP-based networks for the first time. Unlike Microsoft Mail (which required a standalone SMTP relay), Exchange Server 5.0 could, with the help of an add-in called the Internet Mail Connector, communicate directly with servers using (reference missing) . Version 5.0 also introduced a new Web-based e-mail interface Exchange Web Access, this was rebranded as Outlook Web Access

Outlook Web Access

Outlook Web App , originally called Outlook Web Access and before that Exchange Web Connect , is a webmail service of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 and later...

in a later Service pack

Service pack

A service pack is a collection of updates, fixes or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Many companies, such as Microsoft or Autodesk, typically release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain ...

. Along with Exchange Server version 5.0, Microsoft released version 8.01 of Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

, version 5.0 of the Microsoft Exchange Client

Microsoft Exchange Client

and version 7.5 of Microsoft Schedule+ to support the new features in the new version of Exchange Server.

Exchange Server 5.5, introduced November, 1997, was sold in two editions, Standard and Enterprise. They differ in database store size, mail transport connectors and clustering capabilities. The Standard Edition had the same 16 GB database size limitation as earlier versions of Exchange Server, while the Enterprise Edition had an increased limit of 16 TB (although Microsoft's best practices documentation recommends that the message store not exceed 100 GB). The Standard Edition includes the Site Connector, MS Mail Connector, Internet Mail Service (previously "Internet Mail Connector"), and Internet News Service (previously "Internet News Connector"), as well as software to interoperate with cc:Mail

Cc:Mail

, Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group...

and Novell GroupWise

Novell GroupWise

GroupWise is a messaging and collaborative software platform from Novell that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The platform consists of the client software, which is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and the server...

. The Enterprise Edition adds an X.400

X.400

X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that define standards for Data Communication Networks for Message Handling Systems — more commonly known as "email"....

connector, and interoperability software with SNADS

Snads

Acronym of Systems Network Architecture Distribution Services SNADS is a feature available on some computing systems using SNA data links to allow messages and objects to be sent from system to system using the APPC protocol. It is a very robust service: once an object has been accepted by SNADS...

and PROFS. The Enterprise Edition also introduced two node clustering

Microsoft Cluster Server

Microsoft Cluster Server is software designed to allow servers to work together as a computer cluster, to provide failover and increased availability of applications, or parallel calculating power in case of high-performance computing clusters .Microsoft has three technologies for clustering:...

capability. Exchange Server 5.5 introduced a number of other new features including a new version of Outlook Web Access with Calendar support, support for IMAP4 and LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol network...

v3 clients and the Deleted Item Recovery feature. Exchange Server 5.5 was the last version of Exchange Server to have separate directory, SMTP and NNTP services. There was no new version of Exchange Client and Schedule+ for version 5.5, instead version 8.03 of Microsoft Outlook was released to support the new features of Exchange Server 5.5.

Exchange 2000 Server

Exchange 2000 Server (v6.0, code name Platinum), released on November 29, 2000, overcame many of the limitations of its predecessors. For example, it raised the maximum sizes of databases and increased the number of servers in a cluster from two to four. However, many customers were deterred from upgrading by the requirement for a full Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure to be in place, as unlike Exchange Server 5.5, Exchange 2000 Server had no built-in Directory Service, and had a dependency upon Active Directory. The migration process from Exchange Server 5.5 did not have any in-place upgrade path, and necessitated having the two systems online at the same time, with user-to-mailbox mapping and a temporary translation process between the two directories. Exchange 2000 Server also added support for instant messaging

Instant messaging

Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...

, capability was later spun off to Microsoft Office Live Communications Server

Microsoft Office Live Communications Server

Microsoft Lync Server is an enterprise real-time communications server, providing the infrastructure for enterprise instant messaging, presence, file transfer, peer-to-peer and multiparty voice and video calling, ad hoc and structured conferences and, through a 3rd party gateway or SIP trunk, PSTN...

Exchange Server 2003

Exchange Server 2003 (v6.5, code name Titanium) debuted on September 28, 2003.
Exchange Server 2003 (currently at Service Pack

Service pack

2) can be run on Windows 2000 Server (only if Service Pack

Service pack

4 is first installed) and 32-bit

32-bit

The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....

Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...

, although some new features only work with the latter. Like Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003 has many compatibility modes to allow users to slowly migrate to the new system. This is useful in large companies with distributed Exchange Server environments who cannot afford the downtime and expense that comes with a complete migration.

The June 2, 2003, release of Exchange Server 2003 made the migration from pre-2000 versions of Exchange significantly easier (although still involved the same basic steps), and many users of Exchange Server 5.5 waited for the release of Exchange Server 2003 to upgrade. The upgrade process also required upgrading a company's servers to Windows 2000. Some customers opted to stay on a combination of Exchange Server 5.5 and Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0

, both of which are no longer supported by Microsoft.

One of the new features in Exchange Server 2003 is enhanced disaster recovery which allows administrators to bring the server online more quickly. This is done by allowing the server to send and receive mail while the message stores are being recovered from backup. Some features previously available in the Microsoft Mobile Information Server 2001/2002 products have been added to the core Exchange Server product, like Outlook Mobile Access and server-side Exchange ActiveSync

Exchange ActiveSync

Exchange ActiveSync is an XML-based protocol that communicates over HTTP designed for the synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes from a messaging server to a mobile device...

, while the Mobile Information Server product itself has been dropped. Better anti-virus and anti-spam protection have also been added, both by providing built-in APIs that facilitate filtering software and built-in support for the basic methods of originating IP address, SPF

Sender Policy Framework

Sender Policy Framework is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses. SPF allows administrators to specify which hosts are allowed to send mail from a given domain by creating a specific SPF...

("Sender ID"), and DNSBL

DNSBL

A DNSBL is a list of IP addresses published through the Internet Domain Name Service either as a zone file that can be used by DNS server software, or as a live DNS zone that can be queried in real-time...

filtering which were standard on other open source and *nix-based mail servers. Also new is the ability to drop inbound e-mail before being fully processed, thus preventing delays in the message routing system. There are also improved message and mailbox management tools, which allow administrators to execute common chores more quickly. Others, such as Instant Messaging and Exchange Conferencing Server have been extracted completely in order to form separate products. Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server

Microsoft Office Live Communications Server

, Live Meeting

Microsoft Live Meeting

Microsoft Office Live Meeting is a commercial subscription-based web conferencing service operated by Microsoft. Live Meeting includes software that is installed on client PCs, and uses a central server for all clients to connect to...

and Sharepoint as its collaboration software of choice.
Exchange Server is now to be simply e-mail and calendaring.

Exchange Server 2003 added several basic filtering methods to Exchange Server. They are not sophisticated enough to eliminate spam, but they can protect against DoS and mailbox flooding attacks. Exchange Server 2000 supported the ability to block a sender's address, or e-mail domain by adding '*@domain.com', which is still supported in Exchange Server 2003. Added filtering methods in Exchange Server 2003 are:

Connection filtering : Messages are blocked from DNS RBL lists

DNSBL

or from manually specified IP addresses/ranges
Recipient filtering : Messages blocked when sent to manually specified recipients on the server (for intranet-only addresses) or to any recipients not on the server (stopping spammers from guessing addresses)
Sender ID filtering : Sender ID

Sender ID

Sender ID is an anti-spoofing proposal from the former MARID IETF working group that tried to join Sender Policy Framework and Caller ID. Sender ID is defined primarily in Experimental RFC 4406, but there are additional parts in RFC 4405, RFC 4407 and RFC 4408.- Principles of operation :Sender ID...

, a form of Sender Policy Framework (SPF

Sender Policy Framework

)
Intelligent Message Filter : A free Microsoft add-on that uses heuristic message analysis to block messages or direct them to the "Junk E-Mail" folder in Microsoft Outlook clients.

Exchange 2003 mainstream support ended on April 14, 2009.

Editions

Exchange Server 2003 is available in two versions, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Standard Edition supports up to two storage groups (with one of the storage groups, called the recovery storage group, being reserved for database recovery operations) and a maximum of 2 databases per storage group. Each database is limited to a maximum size of 16GB. Beginning with the release of Service Pack

Service pack

2, Standard Edition allows a maximum database size of 75 GB, but only supports 18 GB by default; larger sized databases have to be updated-in with a registry

Windows registry

The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options on Microsoft Windows operating systems. It contains settings for low-level operating system components as well as the applications running on the platform: the kernel, device drivers, services, SAM, user...

change. Enterprise Edition allows a 16 TB maximum database size, and supports up to 4 storage groups with 5 databases per storage group for a total of 20 databases per server.

Exchange Server 2003 is included with both Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Standard and Premium editions and is 32-bit only, and will not install on the various 64-bit

64-bit

64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...

versions of Windows Server 2003.

Exchange Server 2007

Exchange Server 2007 was released on November 30, 2006, to business customers as part of Microsoft's roll-out wave of new products. It includes new clustering options, 64-bit support for greater scalability, voice mail integration, better search and support for Web services, better filtering options, and a new Outlook Web Access interface. Exchange 2007 also dropped support for Exchange 5.50 migrations, routing groups, admin groups, Outlook Mobile Access, X.400, and some API interfaces, amongst other features.

Exchange Server 2007 (v8, code name E12, or with SP1 v8.1) runs only on 64-bit x86-64

X86-64

x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...

versions of Windows Server. This requirement applies to supported production environments only; a 32-bit trial version is available for download and testing. Hence, companies currently running Exchange Server on 32-bit hardware will be required to replace or migrate hardware if they wish to upgrade to the new version. Companies that are currently running Exchange Server on 64-bit capable hardware are still required to migrate from their existing Exchange 2000/2003 servers to a new 2007 server since in-place upgrades are not supported in 2007.

The first beta of Exchange Server 2007 (then named "Exchange 12" or E12) was released in December 2005 to a very limited number of beta testers. A wider beta was made available via TechNet Plus and MSDN subscriptions in March 2006 according to the Microsoft Exchange team blog. On April 25, 2006, Microsoft announced that the next version of Exchange Server would be called Exchange Server 2007.

Exchange server 2007 comes in two editions, Exchange Server 2007 Standard edition and Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition.
Standard edition can have 5 databases in up to 5 storage groups, while in Enterprise edition this is extended to 50 databases in up to 50 storage groups.

SCC and CCR is not supported in standard edition but LCR and SCR is supported. While in Exchange 2007 Enterprise Edition SCC, LCR, CCR and SCR is supported.

Exchange Server 2007 is an integrated part of the Innovative Communications Alliance

Innovative Communications Alliance

The Innovative Communications Alliance is a telecommunications alliance between Microsoft and Nortel, created in July 2006, to co-develop, integrate, market, sell, and support unified communications products...

products.

New features

The principal enhancements, as outlined by Microsoft, are:

Protection: anti-spam, antivirus, compliance, clustering with data replication, improved security and encryption
Improved Information Worker Access: improved calendaring, unified messaging, improved mobility, improved web access
Improved IT Experience: 64-bit performance & scalability, command-line shell & simplified GUI, improved deployment, role separation, simplified routing
Exchange Management Shell: a new command-line shell
Shell (computing)
A shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users of an operating system which provides access to the services of a kernel. However, the term is also applied very loosely to applications and may include any software that is "built around" a particular component, such as web...

and scripting language
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...

for system administration (based on Windows Power Shell). Shell users can perform every task that can be performed in the Exchange Server graphical user interface plus additional tasks, and can program often-used or complex tasks into scripts that can be saved, shared, and re-used. The Exchange Management Shell has over 375 unique commands to manage features of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
"Unified Messaging" that lets users receive voice mail, e-mail, and faxes in their mailboxes, and lets them access their mailboxes from cell phones and other wireless devices. Voice commands can be given to control and listen to e-mail over the phone (and also send some basic messages, like "I'll be late")
Increased the database maximum size limit. Database size is now limited to 16TB per database
Increased the maximum number of storage groups and mail databases per server, to 5 each for Standard Edition (from 1 each in Exchange Server 2003 Standard), and to 50 each for Enterprise Edition (from 4 groups and 20 databases in Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise).
You can configure Outlook Anywhere (formerly known as RPC over HTTP) to provide external access to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for your clients. If you want Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 user profiles to be automatically configured to connect to Exchange 2007, configure the Autodiscover service. This also provides external URLs for Exchange services such as the Availability service and offline address book.

Exchange Server 2010

Microsoft reached the RTM (Release To Manufacturing) milestone for Exchange Server 2010 on October 8, 2009, and it was officially launched on November 9, 2009. A 120 day trial is downloadable from Microsoft. Exchange Server 2010 is available in two server editions; Standard edition and Enterprise edition.

Major changes from previous versions of Exchange Server include:

The high availability options for Mailbox Databases (SCC: Single Copy Clustering, CCR: Clustered Continuous Replication and LCR: Local Continuous Replication) and site resiliency functionality (SCR: Standby Continuous Replication) have been replaced by Database Availability Groups (DAGs) in Exchange Server 2010. Major DAG benefits include providing database level high availability (as opposed to server level), support for up to sixteen (16) copies of each database, and flexible configuration (databases copies may be added / removed at will without requiring major server reconfiguration). Each server that runs the Enterprise edition of Exchange Server 2010 can host up to 100 database copies.
High availability for the Client Access Server role in Exchange Server 2010 is provided by using Client Access Server (CAS) arrays. A CAS array can contain multiple Client Access Servers in an Active Directory site and provide a single name endpoint for client connections. CAS arrays cannot span multiple Active Directory sites.
In Exchange Server 2007, a clustered mailbox server could not be combined with any other roles. In Exchange Server 2010, the Mailbox Server Role may be combined with the Client Access Server and/or Hub Transport roles, regardless of whether or not the mailbox server participates in a Database Availability Group. (However, since Database Availability Groups use Windows Failover Clustering, and Microsoft does not support the combination of Windows Failover Clustering and Windows Network Load Balancing on the same server, a multi-role deployment will require the use of a 3rd party load balancer to provide load balancing and fault tolerance for the Client Access Server role).
With the introduction of the RPC Client Access service, all Outlook clients access their mailbox database through the Client Access Server role. This abstraction layer allows for improved load balancing and redundancy and minimal client impact in the event of a database level *-over ("switchover" or "failover") event.
Exchange Server 2010 provides cost savings in required hardware. Storage performance requirements (measured in IOPS: Input/Output operations Per Second) have been reduced by approximately 70% over Exchange Server 2007, and by approximately 90% over Exchange Server 2003. According to a case study, Microsoft IT was able to reduce hardware costs by 75% during the migration from Exchange Server 2007 to Exchange Server 2010.
Exchange Server 2010 extends the large mailbox support introduced in Exchange Server 2007, and also introduces a Personal Archive feature to allow messages to be retained longer without the need for a 3rd party archival system. The Personal Archive is implemented as a secondary mailbox for archive-enabled users, and in Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1, the Personal Archive may be located on a different database than the primary mailbox, which may reside on a different disk if desired.
The compliance and legal search features have been enhanced. What was formerly known as the "Dumpster" in previous versions of Exchange (a special storage area for messages which have been deleted from the Deleted Items folder or "permanently deleted" from a regular folder, such as the Inbox) has been evolved into the Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Server 2010. If configured appropriately, the Recoverable Items folder allows for a "tamper proof" storage area (users cannot circumvent the Recoverable Items folder to bypass legal discovery), which also provides a revision history of any modified items.
Administration delegation can now be performed at a granular level due to Exchange Server 2010's implementation of Role Based Access Control (RBAC). Users and administrators can be given extremely fine grained abilities for functions provided both within the Exchange Management Console or Exchange Management Shell and in Outlook Web App. For example, a compliance officer may be given the ability to perform cross mailbox discovery searches within Outlook Web App; a help desk technician may be granted the ability to set an Out Of Office message for other employees within the company, or a branch administrator in a remote office may be granted the permission to perform specific Exchange Management Shell commands that pertain only to the Exchange server in their branch office.
Outlook Web App includes improvements (including, for example, the ability for users to track their sent messages and printable calendar views) and the "Premium" experience is now available across multiple browsers (including Safari and Firefox).
Distribution groups can now be "moderated", meaning that distribution groups can now be configured to allow users to join at will or only with a group moderator's permission, and individual messages sent to distribution groups can now be approved or denied by a moderator.
Exchange Server 2010 introduces a transport concept called "Shadow Redundancy" which protects e-mail messages while they are in transit. If a Hub Transport server or an Edge Transport server fails after it has received a message for processing, but before it was able to deliver it to the next "hop" server, the server which sent the message to that transport server is now able to detect the failure and redeliver the message to a different Hub Transport or Edge Transport server for processing.

In January 2011, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 won InfoWorld's 2011 Technology of the Year Award for Best Mail Server.

Clustering and high availability

Exchange Server Enterprise Edition supports clustering of up to 4 nodes when using Windows 2000 Server, and up to 8 nodes with Windows Server 2003. Exchange Server 2003 also introduced active-active clustering, but for two-node clusters only. In this setup, both servers in the cluster are allowed to be active simultaneously. This is opposed to Exchange's more common active-passive mode in which the failover servers in any cluster node cannot be used at all while their corresponding home servers are active. They must wait, inactive, for the home servers in the node to fail. Subsequent performance issues with active-active mode have led Microsoft to recommend that it should no longer be used. In fact, support for active-active mode clustering has been discontinued with Exchange Server 2007.

Exchange's clustering (active-active or active-passive mode) has been criticized because of its requirement for servers in the cluster nodes to share the same physical data. The clustering in Exchange Server provides redundancy for Exchange Server as an application, but not for Exchange data. In this scenario, the data can be regarded as a single point of failure

Single point of failure

A single point of failure is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working. They are undesirable in any system with a goal of high availability or reliability, be it a business practice, software application, or other industrial system.-Overview:Systems can be made...

, despite Microsoft's description of this set up as a "Shared Nothing" model. This void has however been filled by ISV's and storage manufacturers, through "site resilience" solutions, such as geo-clustering and asynchronous data replication. Exchange Server 2007 introduces new cluster terminology and configurations that address the shortcomings of the previous "shared data model".

Exchange Server 2007 provides built-in support for asynchronous replication modeled on SQL Server's "Log shipping

Log shipping

Log shipping is the process of automating the backup of a database and transaction log files on a primary database server, and then restoring them onto a standby server. This technique is supported by Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL...

" in CCR (Cluster Continuous Replication) clusters, which are built on MSCS MNS (Microsoft Cluster Service—Majority Node Set) clusters, which do not require shared storage. This type of cluster can be inexpensive and deployed in one, or "stretched" across two datacenters for protection against site-wide failures such as natural disasters. The limitation of CCR clusters is the ability to have only two nodes and the third node known as "voter node" or file share witness that prevents "split brain" scenarios, generally hosted as a file share on a Hub Transport Server.
The second type of cluster is the traditional clustering that was available in previous versions, and is now being referred to as SCC (Single Copy Cluster). In Exchange Server 2007 deployment of both CCR and SCC clusters has been simplified and improved; the entire cluster install process takes place during Exchange Server installation. LCR or Local Continuous Replication has been referred to as the "poor man's cluster". It is designed to allow for data replication to an alternative drive attached to the same system and is intended to provide protection against local storage failures. It does not protect against the case where the server itself fails.

In November 2007, Microsoft released SP1 for Exchange Server 2007. This service pack includes an additional high-availability feature called SCR (Standby Continuous Replication). Unlike CCR which requires that both servers belong to a Windows cluster, typically residing in the same datacenter, SCR can replicate data to a non-clustered server, located in a separate datacenter.

With Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft introduced the concept of the Database Availability Group (DAG). A DAG contains Mailbox servers that become members of the DAG. Once a Mailbox server is a member of a DAG, the Mailbox Databases on that server can be copied to other members of the DAG. When you add a Mailbox server to a DAG, the Failover Clustering Windows role is installed on the server and all required clustering resources are created.

Licensing

Like Windows Server products, Exchange Server requires Client Access License

Client Access License

A Client Access License is a proprietary software license distributed by software companies such as Microsoft to allow clients to connect to its server software and use the software's services.-Software licensing introduction:...

s, which are different from Windows CALs. Corporate license agreements, such as the Enterprise Agreement, or EA, include Exchange Server CALs. It also comes as part of the Core CAL. Just like Windows Server and other server products from Microsoft, you can choose to use User or Device CALs. Device CALs are assigned to a device (workstation, laptop or PDA). User CALs, are assigned to a user or employee (not a mailbox). User CALs allow a user to access Exchange e-mail from any device. User and Device CALs are the same price, however cannot be used interchangeably. For Service Providers looking to host Microsoft Exchange, there is an SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement) available whereby Microsoft receives a monthly service fee in the place of the traditional Client Access Licenses. Two types of Exchange CAL are available: Exchange CAL Standard and Exchange CAL Enterprise. The Enterprise CAL is an add-on license to the Standard CAL.

Exchange Hosting

Microsoft Exchange Server can also be purchased as a hosted service from a number of providers. Though Exchange Hosting has been around for more than 10 years, it is only recently that many providers have been marketing the service as "Cloud Computing" or Software-as-a-Service. Exchange Hosting allows for Microsoft Exchange Server to be running in the Internet also called the Cloud and managed by a "Hosted Exchange Server provider" instead of building and deploying the system in-house.

Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange Online is an email, calendar and contacts solution delivered as a cloud service, hosted by Microsoft

Microsoft

. It is essentially the same service offered by hosted Exchange providers and it is built on the same technologies as Microsoft Exchange Server. Exchange Online provides end users with a familiar email experience across PCs, the Web and mobile devices, while giving IT administrators or small businesses and professionals web-based tools for managing their online deployment.

Microsoft Exchange is available both as on-premises software and as a hosted service with Exchange Online. Customers can also choose to combine both on-premises and online options in a hybrid deployment.

History

Exchange Online was first provided as a hosted service in dedicated customer environments in 2005 to select pilot customers. Microsoft launched a multi-tenant version of Exchange Online as part of the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite in November 2008. In June 2011, as part of the commercial release of Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 is a commercial software plus services offering a set of products from Microsoft Corporation, with the initial plan including a Professional subscription and an Enterprise subscription...

, Exchange Online was updated with the capabilities of Exchange Server 2010.

Exchange Server 2010 was developed concurrently as a server product and for the Exchange Online service.

Clients

Microsoft Exchange Server uses a proprietary

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

RPC

Remote procedure call

In computer science, a remote procedure call is an inter-process communication that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction...

protocol, MAPI/RPC, that was designed to be used by the Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

client. Clients capable of using the proprietary features of Exchange Server include Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

and Novell Evolution

Novell Evolution

Evolution or Novell Evolution is the official personal information manager and workgroup information management tool for GNOME. It combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions. It has been an official part of GNOME since version 2.8 in September 2004...

. Exchange Web Services (EWS), an alternative to the MAPI protocol, is a documented SOAP

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...

based protocol introduced with Exchange Server 2007 which significantly reduces synchronization time between the server vs. WebDAV, which is used by Exchange Server 2003. Exchange Web Services is used by the latest version of Microsoft Entourage

Microsoft Entourage

Microsoft Entourage was an e-mail client and personal information manager developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and higher. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001 office suite; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS included...

for Mac and Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

for Mac. Also, since the release of Mac OS X v10.6

Mac OS X v10.6

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the seventh major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference...

(also known as Mac OS X Snow Leopard), Mac computers running OS X include some support for this technology via Apple's Mail application. Built-in support with Mac OS X 10.6 requires the Exchange organization to be running Exchange Server 2007 SP1/SP2 or Exchange Server 2010.

Mac users wishing to access Exchange e-mail running on Exchange Server 2000 or 2003 must use Microsoft's Entourage client versions X, 2004 or 2008. Alternatively a limited version of Outlook Web Access is available to Mac users using a web browser. Entourage X, 2004 and 2008 do not support synchronizing tasks and notes with Exchange Servers 2000, 2003, 2007 or 2010. However Entourage 2008 "Web Services Edition", which is a free download from Microsoft for users of Office 2008, does support synchronizing tasks and notes with Exchange Server 2007 SP1 rollup update 4 or later (including Exchange 2010). Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

for Mac 2011 has replaced Entourage "Web Services Edition" but also requires Exchange Server 2007 or later.

E-mail hosted on an Exchange Server can also be accessed using SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4 protocols, using clients such as Outlook Express

Outlook Express

, Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...

, and Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes

. (These protocols must be enabled on the server. Recent versions of Exchange Server turn them off by default.)

Exchange Server mailboxes can also be accessed through a web browser, using Outlook Web Access

Outlook Web Access

Outlook Web App , originally called Outlook Web Access and before that Exchange Web Connect , is a webmail service of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 and later...

(OWA), called Outlook Web App in Exchange Server 2010. Exchange Server 2003 also featured a version of OWA for mobile devices, called Outlook Mobile Access (OMA).

DavMail Gateway allows any email client to connect to a Microsoft Outlook server with Outlook Web Access (OWA).

GNOME Evolution project can be used to Connect to MS-Exchange (in OWA mode for Exchange 2000/2003, native mode for Exchange 2007). Evolution is now also available for Windows.

ActiveSync

Support for Exchange ActiveSync

Exchange ActiveSync

Exchange ActiveSync is an XML-based protocol that communicates over HTTP designed for the synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes from a messaging server to a mobile device...

was added to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Exchange ActiveSync, in the context of Exchange Server, allows a compliant device such as a Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...

device to securely synchronize mail, contacts and other data directly with an Exchange server. Since its inception, ActiveSync has become a popular mobile access standard for businesses due to cross-platform support from companies like Nokia

Nokia

Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...

and Apple Inc. as well as its advanced device security and compliance features.

Support for Push E-mail

Push e-mail

Push email is used to describe email systems that provide an always-on capability, in which new email is actively transferred as it arrives by the mail delivery agent to the mail user agent , also called the email client...

was added to Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2. Windows Mobile 5.0 requires the "Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP)", later versions of the mobile operating system, such as Windows Phone 7, have the capability built in. Many other devices now support ActiveSync push e-mail, such as the iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

and Android Phones.
Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 support the use of Exchange ActiveSync Policies. By using Exchange ActiveSync Policies, administrators can secure the devices that connect to the organization or remotely deactivate features on the devices. Administrators or users can also remotely wipe a lost mobile device.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Exchange 1.0

Exchange Server 4.0

Exchange Server 5.0

Exchange 2000 Server

Exchange Server 2003

Editions

Exchange Server 2007

New features

Exchange Server 2010

Clustering and high availability

Licensing

Exchange Hosting

Exchange Online

History

Clients

ActiveSync

See also

External links