Exchange News

Exchange 2019 Public Preview Released

July 31, 2018 By Gareth Gudger 3 Comments

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Last week Microsoft announced the public preview of Exchange 2019. It is expected that Exchange 2019 will ship later this year.

You can download the preview bits using the link below. Please note, that this is preview code and you should not deploy this in production.

Exchange 2019 Public Preview

Server Core supported for Exchange 2019

The biggest announcement is that Exchange 2019 is the first version of Exchange to work on Windows Server Core. The benefit of Server Core is added security. Server core reduces your attack footprint and a smaller footprint means fewer things to secure and keep up to date.

It’s worth noting that from an administrative standpoint Server Core is a bit of a different animal. If you access Server Core via a console or remote session you are only going to see a command line. You will quickly notice that programs which use an MMC, such as Services or Event Viewer, are unavailable. In addition, shell programs such as Windows Explorer, or, Task Manager are also unavailable.

For Exchange, this is not much of an issue because the Exchange Admin Center and Exchange Management Shell can be run remotely from anywhere. For everything else, you will need to use Remote Server Administration Tools or remote PowerShell. For a list of tools that are directly accessible on Server Core check out the article: What is the Server Core installation option in Windows Server?

For a great write-up on installing Exchange 2019 on Windows Server Core, check out this article from the Exchange Team.

Of course, if you prefer to have the full desktop experience you can still install Exchange 2019 on a server with a GUI. [Read more…] about Exchange 2019 Public Preview Released

Exchange June 2018 Updates

June 19, 2018 By Gareth Gudger Leave a Comment

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Today was a big day for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 10 for Exchange 2016, but we also got Cumulative Update 21 for Exchange 2013. Exchange 2010 also receives a critical update in rollup 22.

As always, test these updates in a lab first! I recommend checking out this 7-part guide on configuring Exchange in your lab. It doesn’t take much to get one going.

The updates are as follows:

Exchange 2016 Cumulative Update 10 | KB4099852 | UM Language Pack

Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 21 | KB4099855 | UM Language Pack

Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 22 | KB4295699

Exchange 2013 enters extended support

In case you missed it Exchange 2013 entered into extended support on April 10th. Cumulative Update 21 is the last planned update for Exchange 2013 and no further product development is expected. Any cumulative update after 21 is at Microsoft’s discretion. However, security and timezone updates will continue to be available until April 11th, 2023, delivered primarily through the Windows Update Catalog.

As a reminder, Exchange 2010 has less than 18 months of extended support remaining. After January 10th 2020, no further technical support or updates will be available. This includes security, bug and time zone updates. If you are still on 2010, I would recommend planning a migration to Exchange 2016 or Office 365 as soon as possible.

So, what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?

One prerequisite change is the need to install Visual C++ 2013. This is required for a third party software component–that manages WebReady document viewing and data loss prevention–which ships in these updates. Visual C++ 2012 was the previous requirement for older cumulative updates. However, Visual C++ 2012 was installed automatically by the Unified Communication Management Agent (another Exchange prerequisite), so it never required administrator intervention. This means Visual C++ 2013 will also be a requirement for new server installations.

Exchange 2010 received a significant update in this release, which is the ability to leverage Windows 2016 domain controllers and global catalog servers. While 2016 DCs could exist in an Exchange 2010 environment, Exchange 2010 would simply not use them. With this update, 2010 will now leverage 2016 domain controllers and allow for the domain and forest functional levels to be raised to Windows Server 2016. This will allow you to eliminate all older domain controllers.

These updates contain a lot of security and bug fixes. Aside from the May 8th security update each cumulative update includes time zone updates and a dozen bug fixes. Check the appropriate KB article above for a list of issues each update resolves. [Read more…] about Exchange June 2018 Updates

RunAs Radio #588 – Exchange Updates with Gareth Gudger

June 13, 2018 By Gareth Gudger Leave a Comment

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On May 4th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on the RunAs Radio podcast. I joined host Richard Campbell to discuss the latest in Exchange and Office 365. We also discuss the deciding factors and roadblocks companies face when exploring the cloud.

It was great to be back on Richard’s show. We couldn’t believe our last recording together was one and a half years ago. Boy–time flies!

Listen to the podcast

(Originally posted at http://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/588)

#MVPbuzzChat – Data residency, Hybrid Modern Authentication & Exchange 2019

March 29, 2018 By Gareth Gudger 2 Comments

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On March 24th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on #MVPBuzzChat. I joined host Christian Buckley to discuss data residency, hybrid modern authentication and new products shipping in 2018. We also discussed the importance of TAP, Windows Insider program and participating in UserVoice.

[Read more…]

Exchange March 2018 Updates

March 20, 2018 By Gareth Gudger Leave a Comment

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Today was a big day for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 9 for Exchange 2016, but we also got Cumulative Update 20 for Exchange 2013. Exchange 2010 also receives a critical security update in rollup 20.

As always, test these updates in a lab first! I recommend checking out this 7-part guide on configuring Exchange in your lab. It doesn’t take much to get one going.

The updates are as follows:

Exchange 2016 Cumulative Update 9 | KB4055222 | UM Language Pack

Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 20 | KB4055221 | UM Language Pack

Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 20 | KB4073537

So, what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?

The March 2018 updates introduces full support for TLS 1.2. This is critical because in future updates Exchange will disable support for the older TLS protocols. TLS 1.2 boasts significantly stronger ciphers than its predecessors by introducing SHA-256. For a great comparison on the differences between each version of the protocol I recommend the article TLS 1.2 vs TLS 1.1 by KeyCDN.

Disabling the older TLS protocols does present some challenges. As mentioned in my article Disabling TLS 1.0 may cause Outlook to crash, older operating systems such as Windows 7, will require additional registry hacks and tweaks to work in a pure TLS 1.2 environment. Before disabling TLS 1.0 in your environment you may want to look at the state of your client operating systems as a whole and determine if a project to upgrade to Windows 10 should be tackled first. TLS support is based on what the operating system can do and not the Outlook client.

I highly recommend checking out Brian Day’s series on transitioning an Exchange organization to TLS 1.2.

These updates also contain security and bug fixes. Check the appropriate KB article above for a list of issues each update resolves. [Read more…] about Exchange March 2018 Updates

MVPs Talk Microsoft 365 podcast – What’s new in Exchange & Office 365

February 20, 2018 By Gareth Gudger 1 Comment

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On January 13th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on the MVPs Talk Microsoft 365 podcast. I joined host Neil McDonnell to discuss what’s new in Exchange and Office 365.

Listen to “Gareth Gudger | Blue Chip Consulting Group | MVPs Talk Microsoft 365 | Episode 8” on Spreaker.

[Read more…]

Exchange December 2017 Updates

December 30, 2017 By Gareth Gudger Leave a Comment

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Last week was a big week for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 8 for Exchange 2016, but we also got Cumulative Update 19 for Exchange 2013. Exchange 2010 also receives a critical security update in rollup 19.

As always, test these updates in a lab first! I recommend checking out this 7-part guide on configuring Exchange in your lab. It doesn’t take much to get one going.

The updates are as follows:

Exchange 2016 Cumulative Update 8 | KB4035145 | UM Language Pack

Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 19 | KB4037224 | UM Language Pack

Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 19 | KB4035162

Critical security update for Exchange 2010

Rollup 19 for Exchange 2010 fixes a massive security issue for EWS connections proxied from an Exchange 2016 server. To quote Microsoft Support.

In a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server 2016 coexistence environment, when EWS connections are proxied from Exchange Server 2016 to Exchange Server 2010, all mailboxes of Exchange Server 2010 can be accessed without any permission.Microsoft Support

That is a significant security hole. For those on Exchange 2010, I highly recommend testing and upgrading to this roll-up as soon as possible.

15 Microsoft Ignite sessions every Exchange admin should see (2017)

October 7, 2017 By Gareth Gudger 1 Comment

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Microsoft hosted its annual Ignite conference in Orlando this September. Ignite was massive at 1695 sessions. Almost 300 sessions more than last year. That is a lot of sessions! Many are posted at the Ignite channel on YouTube or through the Microsoft Ignite On Demand portal. Here are the top 15 sessions I think every Exchange admin should watch.

Tip: I have included notes for each session and the time each topic starts. You can expand the session notes under each video by clicking “Show more session notes”

Thrive as an enterprise organization in Microsoft Exchange Online
If you could only watch one session then it should be this one. In this session, Jeff Kizner reveals a slew of announcements for Exchange Online. Announcements include; highly requested coexistence features for Exchange hybrid and, new advances in a tenant to tenant migrations. Jeff demonstrates a mailbox move between two Office 365 tenants using MRS and PowerShell.

Mailbox Plans (4:06 mins)
- Set-MailboxPlan can now assign a retention policy to a mailbox when the mailbox is provisioned.
- Set-CASMailboxPlan (new cmdlet) can now configure whether ActiveSync, IMAP, and POP are enabled on a mailbox when it is provisioned in Office 365.
Client Access Rules (6:52 mins)
- Additional rule conditions for matching source IP, protocol, recipient filters, or, username
- Great for only allowing certain protocols from certain locations (e.g. ActiveSync from satellite offices)
- You can have up to 20 client access rules
- Best practice to have an “Allow PowerShell” rule in priority 1 (don’t lock yourself out!)
Creating a custom app for message classification (16:00 mins)
- Jeff demonstrates a custom app that uses the Outlook On Send feature to take action when a user clicks the send button in Outlook
- On Send must be enabled in the OwaMailboxPolicy assigned to the user
- Available since Exchange 2016 CU5
Hybrid delegation (26:40 mins)
- Jeff discusses and demos advancements in hybrid delegation (full access, auto-map, send as, send on behalf)
On-premises policies will come over to Office 365 (46:06 mins)
- Hybrid wizard will ask you which on-prem policies you want to copy into Office 365 (e.g. OWA, ActiveSync and Retention policies)
- User’s mailbox, when moved to Office 365, will retain their existing policy assignments
Hybrid publishing (50:52 mins)
Hybrid recipient management (54:16 mins)
- Jeff’s team is working towards allowing admins to make changes to attributes in Office 365 and have those attributes sync back to on-prem. This will remove the need to keep Exchange on-prem for recipient management.
- Jeff’s team is also looking at changing the source of authority on synchronized objects to Azure Active Directory.
Migrating data between tenants – mergers and acquisitions (59:33 mins)
- Jeff demonstrates a mailbox move between two Office 365 tenants using MRS and PowerShell.

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Scott Schnoll’s Exchange tips and tricks
Scott provides us with his top tips for Exchange. Topics include:

Server roles in Exchange 2016 (1:41 mins)
How Exchange is developed (2:41 mins)
Exchange 2016 Lifecycle (3:56 mins)
Changes in Exchange 2016 CU7 (4:51 mins)
- Forest functional level is now 2008 R2 or higher
Announcing Exchange 2019 (8:48 mins)
- Preview shipping mid-2018
- General release second half of 2018
Bug in Windows Server 2016 that caused IIS to crash – KB3206632 (10:20 mins)
iOS11 issue with HTTP/2 (11:22 mins)
- Microsoft turned off HTTP/2 across all Exchange Online servers
- Microsoft recommends administrators disable HTTP/2 across all on-premises Exchange servers until Apple resolves this issue
- Microsoft is working with Apple to help them resolve the issue
New calendar improvements across all Outlook clients (15:16 mins)
Administrator configured out of office replies (18:00 mins)
Message Latency in logs (19:47 mins)
Running antivirus on the operating system (21:00 mins)
- Windows Server 2016 comes with a built-in fully-fledged antivirus
- Make sure to configure antivirus with all path, process and file type exclusions
Health mailboxes (23:22 mins)
- Do not alter their AD account in any way
- Do not alter their password or account lockout settings
- Do not move or alter their mailboxes in any way
Stalled mailbox migrations to Office 365 (26:40 mins)
Protocol Agnostic Workflow (PAW) (30:24 mins)
- New mailbox migration code in Office 365 that improves stability and throughput
- Individual users can be removed from a batch
- Batch completions can be scheduled
- Better reporting
- Microsoft will automatically enable this for your tenant but only if your tenant has no active or completed batches
OAuth (35:26 mins)
Hybrid license key and hybrid diagnostics wizard (39:20 mins)
When to decommission Exchange on-premises (42:00 mins)
PST elimination tools (44:27 mins)
Deprecation of RPC over HTTPS – Outlook Anywhere (46:32 mins)
Mailbox encryption coming soon to Office 365. You can encrypt with either: (53:00 mins)
- Microsoft managed key
- Customer provided key
Using Azure VM for DAG witness (55:04 mins)
Changes to lagged copy behavior (56:15 mins)
Recovering an Exchange Server with newer CU (59:58 mins)
- This is possible and supported
- Admin version will still show old CU build until you go to a newer CU later on
New anti-phishing behavior in Office 365 (1:01:09 mins)
Connecting to Security & Compliance Center via PowerShell (1:07:29 mins)
Azure Information Protection – AIP (1:08:17 mins)
Advanced Find in Outlook deprecation and reinstatement (1:12:38 mins)
New TAP program for migrating public folders to Office 365 Groups (1:13:14 mins)

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Modern authentication for Exchange Server on-premises
Greg Taylor discusses two new modern authentication scenarios coming to Exchange on-premises. One scenario which will be available to Exchange 2013 and 2016. And a future scenario that will be available in Exchange 2019. No bunnies were harmed in the delivery of this session.

Importance of Modern Authentication (2:39 mins)
- Allows Outlook to authenticate with a token
- An easier route to enable Outlook for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Relies on strong network connectivity
Two implementations of modern authentication will ship (7:10 mins)
- Exchange 2013 / 2016 implementation expected by December 2017
- Exchange 2019 implementation will ship when new release ships second half 2018
Overview of how modern authentication works (10:00 mins)
- Modern auth will only work with MAPI over HTTP.
- No RPC over HTTP support.
- Exchange will use modern auth for all client connections, regardless of whether they originate from inside or outside the network.
Example of modern auth during autodiscover (15:35 mins)
- Authorization type of “Bearer” is Outlook instructing Exchange that it can do modern authentication
- Exchange responds to the client with STS authorization URL (for example AD FS)
Explanation of token exchange (17:46 mins)
- The access token has a lifetime of 1 hour (default TTL)
- When the Access token expires the client uses their Refresh token to request a new Access Token (re-authenticate)
- The refresh token is valid for 14 days (default TTL)
- Password change:
  - Immediately invalidates the Refresh Token.
  - Access token remains valid for the remainder of its duration (up to 1 hour)
Deep dive into two versions of on-prem modern auth (23:30 mins)
- Exchange 2019 will ship with an on-prem implementation of Modern Auth
  - AD FS 2016 required
  - Outlook 2016 / 2019 required
    - Outlook 2013 and older will not work
  - Exchange 2013 / 2016 can be in the organization (no Exchange 2010)
  - Device registration is required
- Exchange 2013/2016 will ship with a hybrid implementation of Modern Auth
  - Will require hybrid connectivity with Office 365
  - AD FS not required (can just use Password Sync with Azure AD Connect)
  - Exchange HCW must be run to enable OAuth
  - On-prem SPNs registered with Azure AD (configuring this is shown at 39:05 mins)
  - Exchange 2010 is completely unsupported and must be removed from the environment – no coexistence
OAuth tokens rely on TLS for encryption (32:13 mins)

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Exchange News

Server Core supported for Exchange 2019

Exchange 2013 enters extended support

So, what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?

Listen to the podcast

So, what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?

Critical security update for Exchange 2010

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