Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010

Windows Server 2008 R2 builds on the award-winning foundation of Windows Server 2008, expanding existing technology and adding new features to enable IT professionals to increase the reliability and flexibility of their server infrastructures. New virtualization tools, Web resources, management enhancements, and exciting Windows 7 integration help save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and efficiently managed data center. Powerful tools such as Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7.5, updated Server Manager and Hyper-V platforms and Windows PowerShell version 2.0 combine to give customers greater control, increased efficiency and the ability to react to front-line business needs faster than ever before......

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Benefits of Upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Cross-Premises Email Routing
Microsoft cites the example of a school that wishes to use on-premises email for staff and an externally hosted service for students. We have deployed Exchange in many schools that would love to do exactly that, as well as some large enterprises that want to retain highly available, mission critical mail services in one system and move non-critical users onto a cheaper platform elsewhere.
Enhanced Disclaimers
Immediately solves the problem of customers wanting to include links, images, or dynamically generate their disclaimers using AD attributes and have had to turn to third party commerical options to do this.
Moderated Transport
This feature solves the problem of protecting distribution lists from inappropriate use without totally blocking them off from important emails.
Reduced IOPS
Improvements to the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) have reduced disk IOPS requirements by as much as 70% from Exchange Server 2007, making Exchange storage sizing a much simpler and less costly exercise. In a discussion with Microsoft they sketched out a storage layout of single 1TB SATA II disks (without RAID) each hosting a single database for hundreds (or thousands) of users.
High Availability
The enhancements to high availability (now being called “continuous availability”) are nothing short of spectacular, with Database Availability Groups (DAG) providing per-database failover capabilities, making failover scenarios more efficient and easier to plan for



Seamless Mailbox Moves
With MAPI connectivity abstracted to the Client Access Server layer mailbox moves on the backend database can occur without interrupting client connectivity. Obviously this makes scheduling of any mailbox move scenario a much easier task.

New Features in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 brings a new and rich set of technologies, features, and services to the Exchange Server product line. The following is a list of the new features and functionality that are included in Exchange 2010 and it provides important information to use when you're upgrading, migrating, deploying, and administering Exchange 2010 in your organization.
Outlook Web Access (OWA) support for Multiple Browsers
Support for different browsers such as Firefox,Safari, Internet Explorer and more.
Improved Storage Reliability
New ability to run Exchange reliably without dealing with Windows clustering, RAID arrays, or fancy Enterprise-class disk. It will be cheap to save or restore/ recover data and quick too.
Mail Tips
Mail Tips is a program which tells you about the possible mistakes you are going to do by sending an email to someone whom you don't intend to. Mail Tips helps you by warning you in advance and giving you tips.
Conversation View
Users can now view threaded conversations under one single node when exchanging messages.
Sharing
This is another feature that allows to share a lot of things effectively. Exchange Server 2010 has twonew  main properties to share:
  • Calendar Sharing. You can share calendars to federated users by OWA.
  • Contact Sharing. You can share contacts very easily now.
Voice Mail Preview
Users will now have a text preview of your voice mail messages.
Exchange Control Panel (ECP)
Get self serviced tasks that before required  administrators intervention.
Critical Security
Microsoft has gone over the typical or traditional security benchmarks and have fancied some really cool features in Exchange server programs. If you lead an organization, you will be happy to know that Microsoft has introduced features like:
  • Mobile Device Block/Allow List. Block/unblock specific devices only, helping you to have a secure way of hardware monitoring.
  • Protected voice mail.  You can now actually protect voice mail and track them and restrict them not to go outside the organization anyhow.
  • Outlook protection rules. Automatically triggers Outlook to apply an RMS template to a message before it is sent.
Distribution Group Management
Create, modify and access different distribution groups according to your choices and likings. That will help a better precision in teaming with the right kind of people under a single roof which will automatically increase effectiveness than reaching out to specific people individually.
Backing up Exchange Server with DPM 2010
Now you can back up all of your Exchange Server 2003 through 2010 with Data Protection Manager 2010. See DPM 2010 New Features.
Others
SATA support now involving I/O optimization, JDBO support, incoming voice mail reception and multi-mailbox search