On October 4th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on the RunAs Radio podcast. I joined host Richard Campbell to discuss what we learned about the future of Exchange from Ignite 2016.
[Read more…] about RunAs Radio #504 – Favorite Exchange sessions at Microsoft IgniteExchange News
The Current Status – Episode 43 – Live from IT/Dev Connections
During my recent visit to IT/Dev Connections, I had the great pleasure of being a guest on The Current Status – Episode 43. I joined hosts Phoummala Schmitt and Theresa Miller and special guests Michael Van Horenbeeck and Paul Cunningham.
In this episode, we discuss what we learned from Microsoft Ignite and IT/Dev Connections with regard to the future of Exchange and Office 365.
(Originally posted at https://soundcloud.com/thecurrentstatus/episode-43-exchange-uncut)
[Read more…] about The Current Status – Episode 43 – Live from IT/Dev Connections15 Microsoft Ignite sessions every Exchange admin should see (2016)
Microsoft hosted its annual Ignite conference in Atlanta this September. Ignite was massive at 1412 sessions. That is a lot of sessions! Many are posted at the Ignite channel on YouTube. Here are the top 15 sessions I think every Exchange admin should watch.
Understand the Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Architecture
Ross Smith discusses the Exchange 2016 preferred architecture. Mike Cooper of GM discusses his implementation of Exchange 2016. Ross and Mike take questions from the audience.
- Ross demonstrates a new feature where you can recover deleted or purged items to their original folder.
Deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2016
Brian Day and Jeff Guillet discuss what’s changed in Exchange system requirements. Discussions included:
- Exchange 2016 CU3 supports Windows Server 2016
- Server 2008 R2 FFL/DFL will become the new minimum requirement in future Exchange 2016 releases.
- .NET 4.6.2 currently only supported on Exchange 2016 CU3 on Server 2016. Will be made available in CU15/CU4 for older operating systems.
- .NET 4.6.2 will be mandatory with CU16/CU5. The setup will block you if you don’t have 4.6.2 installed.
- WMFS 5 is only supported on Windows Server 2016. It is not supported when you install it on older operating systems (use the version that comes with your OS).
Design your Exchange infrastructure right (or consider moving to Office 365)
Robert Gillies, Boris Lokhvitsky, Adrian Moore discuss the business benefits of deploying the Exchange preferred architecture.
- The importance of eradicating failure domains
- SAN versus DAS
- Since Exchange 2003 each version has dropped IOPS requirements.
- Exchange 2016 uses 93% fewer IOPs than 2003
- Exchange 2016 uses 30% fewer IOPs than 2013
- Exchange databases average 10 IOPs
- 7200 RPM SATA/NL-SAS average 70 IOPs
- Thick versus Thin Provisioning
- The importance of controller write cache
- Bound versus Unbound Namespaces
- Stretched DAGs
- Virtual vs. Physical
Exchange September 2016 Updates
Today was a big day for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 14 for Exchange 2013, but we also got our third update for Exchange 2016.
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 Server 2016 Cumulative Update 3 | KB3152589 | UM Language Pack
Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 14 | KB3177670 | UM Language Pack
Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 15 | KB3184728
Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 21 | KB3184711
So what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?
Quite a lot actually. Namely Exchange 2016 can now be deployed on Windows Server 2016. Keep in mind that you must deploy Cumulative Update 3 to Windows Server 2016. Older Cumulative Updates will not work. Exchange 2013 is not supported on Windows Server 2016. It is unlikely support will ever be added.
Exchange will also work with Server 2016 domain controllers. However, this will require raising the domain and forest functional levels to a minimum of Server 2008 R2.
Another amazing addition to Cumulative Update 3 is the ability for search indexes to read from their local database copies. In prior versions, search indexes would reach across the network to read from the active database copy. With search indexes using their local copies network utilization can drop by a staggering 40%.
This is great news for a company that stretches its DAG (database availability group) across geographic sites as this will drop WAN utilization. This change also reduces database failover times by up to 33%. For more information check out this great video by Greg Taylor.
Windows Server 2016 ships with .NET Framework 4.6.2. That said Exchange Server 2016 CU3 on Windows Server 2016 will be the only supported scenario for .NET Framework 4.6.2. The Exchange Team plans to support .NET 4.6.2 for older releases in the December update. Until then keep .NET 4.6.2 blocked from your 2012 servers.
The Exchange Team has also changed how servers are placed into a server-wide offline mode during upgrades. In previous versions, when applying a cumulative update, Exchange 2013 and 2016 would be placed into an offline mode during pre-requisite analysis. If a server were to fail analysis it could remain offline despite no changes being made. Starting with the September releases server-wide offline is not set until after analysis completes and the installation is ready to make changes.
[Read more…] about Exchange September 2016 UpdatesThe UC Architects – Episode 59
On August 7th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on The UC Architects podcast. I joined hosts Steve Goodman and Dave Stork to discuss the latest in Unified Communications.
[Read more…] about The UC Architects – Episode 59Exchange June 2016 Updates
Earlier this month was a big day for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 13 for Exchange 2013, but we also got our second update for Exchange 2016.
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 Server 2016 Cumulative Update 2 | UM Language Pack Download
Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 13 | UM Language Pack Download
Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 14
Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 20
Update: Special thanks to Keith Kroslow who pointed out that Exchange 2010 and 2007 did get an update. Their updates fix a potential elevation issue for Oracle products installed on an Exchange server. Check out KB 3151097 for 2010 and KB 3151086 for 2007.
So what’s new?
This update is a culmination of bug fixes and feature tweaks. Most notably we now see official support for .NET 4.6.1. The lack of support became a particular issue when Windows Updates began recommending this update back in February. Thankfully all stability issues have since been resolved. Microsoft recommends updating to CU2 and CU13 before installing .NET 4.6.1.
In the last update, we saw the end of SHA-1 certificates for S/MIME. This update follows suit by dropping SHA-1 from Exchange’s self-signed certificates. To get this added security you will need to regenerate your existing self-signed certificates. SHA-2 will be deployed by default for newly installed Exchange servers.
Another important update is the resolution of potential data loss when migrating public folders. You can read more about it in KB 3161916.
We also see added support for BitLocker during AutoReseed operations. Up to this point, you had to manually encrypt a hot spare either before or after an AutoReseed operation. With this update, we can now have Disk Reclaimer automatically encrypt the drive during AutoReseed operations. You will need to enable this functionality on your DAG.
C:\> Set-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup <Name> -AutoDagBitLockerEnabled $true[Read more…] about Exchange June 2016 Updates