Practical Help for Exchange & Office 365
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.
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 ConnectionsMicrosoft 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.
Deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2016
Brian Day and Jeff Guillet discuss what’s changed in Exchange system requirements. Discussions included:
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.
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.
Earlier this month was a big day for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 12 for Exchange 2013, but we also got our first update for Exchange 2016. Yay!
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 1 | UM Language Pack Download
Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 12 | UM Language Pack Download
Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 13
Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 19
This update is a culmination of bug fixes and feature tweaks. Most notably the OWA S/MIME control ditches its SHA-1 signing certificate in favor of the more secure and robust SHA-2. This signing change makes it to all supported versions of Exchange. For 2007, which is in extended support, this is the only thing Rollup 19 addresses. Exchange 2010, also in extended support, similarly sees this update and just one other minor tweak–which is the introduction of a link to the new Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
Despite the inclusion of this link in EMC, the new Hybrid Configuration Wizard was able to run against prior roll-ups of Exchange 2010. This update simply adds a link for ease of access. Be sure to check out this blog post from the Exchange Team for more info on the new HCW for Exchange 2010.
Another cool update, that flew under the radar, is that the web.config file for Outlook on the Web will now be preserved during a cumulative update. This is neat because it will preserve any customization admins may have made to that file. Sadly this change only applies to Exchange 2016 deployments but let us keep our fingers crossed this will be ported back to Exchange 2013.
One surprising plot twist was the retraction of Mailbox Anchoring in the Exchange Management Shell. This had been implemented in the previous 2013 update and was set to ship with 2016 CU1. Exchange CU12 sees this change reverted and 2016 never sees it at all.
Mailbox Anchoring was the concept of making sure that an admin was always getting the same experience when connecting to the Exchange Management Shell. This was especially important in an environment where Exchange 2013 and 2016 are load balanced in the same pool.
In essence, when you opened Exchange Management Shell mailbox anchoring would always proxy you to the server that hosted your admin mailbox. If your admin account didn’t have a mailbox, or, it was unavailable, then it would proxy you to a server hosting the arbitration mailbox. If neither were available then the Exchange Management Shell would fail to connect. At this point, your only option was to connect through local PowerShell and add the Exchange snap-in.
Microsoft has reverted this change in response to community feedback.
As mentioned in a previous post .NET 4.6.1 continues to remain unsupported. The Exchange Team has indicated that support will be added in a future cumulative update. For now, keep that update away from your Exchange servers. As of writing 4.5.2 remains the highest supported version for Exchange 2013 & 2016.
Other items of note include:
Thursday night I had the great pleasure of being a guest on The Current Status. We had an awesome discussion on Exchange 2016 and the preferred architecture. Check out the video below.
Tip: For everything new to Exchange 2016 check this article.
[Read more…] about Webcast: Exchange 2016 and the Preferred Architecture