Exchange 2010 SP2 Has Arrived

After what feels like a long wait… Exchange 2010 SP2 has hit the web, http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28190.

Some highlights:

Address Book Policies – ABP

Create customs GALs to different sets of mailboxes based attributes and filters.

Hybrid Configuration Wizard

Ease co-existence configuration between Exchange Online and on-premise deployments.

Exchange UM Language packs

There are a number of new language packs for Exchange 2010 UM

Outlook Mobile Access – OMA

OMA makes a return providing a web based mailbox interface for browser's on small screened devices.

Improving Exchange UM Resilience/Availability

I was asked the other week how to load balance the UM role, I am going to use this post to provide some simple advice to get you started.

In short, add multiple UM role servers to each Dial Plan you wish to make more resilient to application or operating system failure.

Depending on your IP Gateway you should be able to round robin or balance the load between UM servers. To remove a server temporarily you could use:

set-umserver -identity e14um01 -status nonewcalls

Simple and to the point I hope.

Technorati Tags: Exchange,UM

Assigned additional IP Addresses to Exchange Server?

It’s been a while since my last post, so I’m easing in gently with an old favourite of mine I have recently used in deploying a hosting solution…

I can think of a number of reasons you can end up with multiple IP address; on-premise it may be to support additional receive connectors using the same port; and in the hosting world for Autodiscover or OWA customisation.

If the IP addresses are on the same subnet you can just apply them to the primary NIC, this may result in routing issue however as they will all be registered in DNS. Over the years my approach has been to simply add a secondary NIC (made easy even easier with virtualisation) with the “Register this connections addresses in DNS” option not checked and to assign the additional IP addresses to this NIC.



I have been using this with Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 for a many years without any problems.

Hope you find this useful.
Daniel

EMC 2007/2010 IE9 bug fixed

Microsoft have release an IE9 fix to resolve the interoperability issues with between Exchange 2007 and 2010 EMC. Great news (not that I ever get use EMC anymore, well at least that was until this announcement Future of /Hosting Mode).

Anyway back to the fix… Exchange 2007 or 2010 EMC might fail to close with "You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console". The Exchange team have posted this on there blog with links to the fix, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/17/a-fix-for-the-interoperability-issues-between-exchange-2007-and-2010-emc-and-ie9-is-now-available.aspx.

Daniel

RIP /Hosting Mode – Exchange Server 2010 /Hosting

I have been waiting for this for a while, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/10/13/future-of-hosting-mode.aspx.

In summary…

• 180 U turn on hosting!
• You don’t need to use /Hosting Mode, on-premise is probably the preferred choice now
• No new features will be added to SP2 /Hosting Mode, that includes UM
• You will probably need to use an automation partner or have s**t hot Exchange Admins

While I do not agree with this, I do understand working with one product with tweaks is mush easier. Looks like it is back to the way I used to do Hosted Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 before /Hosting Mode was born.

I’ know what I’m doing for the rest of the month….