Showing posts with label Exchange server. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exchange server. Show all posts
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Exchange 2010 System Requirements
Exchange 2010 System Requirements
Before you install Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, we recommend that you review this topic to ensure that your network, hardware, software, clients, and other elements meet the requirements for Exchange 2010. In addition, make sure you understand the coexistence scenarios that are supported for Exchange 2010 and earlier versions of Exchange.
Supported Coexistence Scenarios The following table lists the scenarios in which coexistence between Exchange 2010 and earlier versions of Exchange are supported.
Exchange 2000 Server
Coexistence of Exchange 2010 and earlier versions of Exchange Server
| Exchange version | Exchange organization coexistence |
|---|---|
| Exchange 2000 Server | Not supported |
| Exchange Server 2003 | Supported |
| Exchange 2007 | Supported |
| Mixed Exchange 2007 and Exchange Server 2003 organization | Supported |
Exchange 2000 Server You can't upgrade an existing Exchange 2000 organization directly to Exchange 2010. You must first upgrade the Exchange 2000 organization to either an Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 organization, and then you can upgrade the Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 organization to Exchange 2010. We recommend that you upgrade your organization from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003, and then upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.
Network and Directory Servers The following table lists the requirements for the network and the directory servers in your Exchange 2010 organization.
Network and directory server requirements for Exchange 2010
Network and directory server requirements for Exchange 2010
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Schema master | By default, the schema master runs on the first Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller installed in a forest. The schema master must be running any of the following:
|
| Global catalog server | In each Active Directory site where you plan to install Exchange 2010, you must have at least one global catalog server for each domain running any of the following:
|
| Domain controller | In each Active Directory site where you plan to install Exchange 2010, you must have at least one writeable domain controller running any of the following:
|
| Active Directory forest | Active Directory must be at Windows Server 2003 forest functionality mode or higher. |
| Ipv6 Support | IPv6 is supported only when IPv4 is also used; a pure IPv6 environment isn't supported. Using IPv6 addresses and IP address ranges is supported only when both IPv6 and IPv4 are enabled on that computer, and the network supports both IP address versions. If Exchange 2010 is deployed in this configuration, all server roles can send data to and receive data from devices, servers, and clients that use IPv6 addresses. Exchange 2010 support is similar to support for Exchange Server 2007. |
Directory Server Architecture The use of 64-bit Active Directory domain controllers increases directory service performance for Exchange 2010. For more information about Exchange 2010, the Mailbox server role and Active Directory ratios, see the "Active Directory Server and Mailbox Server Ratios" section in Understanding Server Role Ratios and Exchange Performance.
Installing Exchange 2010 on Directory Servers
 Note: |
|---|
| In multi-domain environments, on Windows Server 2008 domain controllers that have the Active Directory language locale set to Japanese, your servers may not receive some attributes that are stored on an object during inbound replication. |
Installing Exchange 2010 on Directory Servers For security and performance reasons, we recommend that you install Exchange 2010 only on member servers and not on Active Directory directory servers. However, you can't run DCPromo on a computer running Exchange 2010. After Exchange 2010 is installed, changing its role from a member server to a directory server, or vice versa, isn't supported.
Hardware The recommended hardware requirements for Exchange 2010 servers vary depending on a number of factors including the server roles that are installed and the anticipated load that will be placed on the servers.
Hardware requirements for Exchange 2010
Hardware requirements for Exchange 2010
| Component | Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Processor |
| It's supported to install the Exchange management tools on a computer that has a 64-bit processor. |
| Memory | Varies depending on Exchange features that are installed | For detailed information about memory requirements for Exchange 2010, see Understanding Memory Configurations and Exchange Performance. |
| Paging file size | The page file size minimum and maximum must be set to physical RAM plus 10 MB | The recommended page file size also accounts for the memory that's needed to collect information if the operating system stops unexpectedly. On 64-bit operating systems, memory can be written as a dump file to the paging file. This file must reside on the boot volume of the server. For more information about the configuration options that are available for memory dump data, see Knowledge Base article 254649, Overview of memory dump file options for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. |
| Disk space |
| The minimum space requirements detailed here don't account for disk subsystem requirements for adequate performance. |
| Drive | DVD-ROM drive, local or network accessible | None. |
| Screen resolution | 800 x 600 pixels or higher | None. |
| File format | Disk partitions formatted as NTFS file systems, which applies to the following partitions:
| None. |
Operating System The following table lists the supported operating systems for Exchange 2010.
Supported operating systems for Exchange 2010
Supported operating systems for Exchange 2010
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Operating system on a computer that has a 64-bit processor | One of the following:
|
| Operating system for installing the Exchange management tools on a computer that has a 64-bit processor | One of the following:
|
 Important: |
|---|
| The release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Exchange 2010 doesn’t support being run on computers with the United States Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliant settings enabled. If you have FIPS enabled on computers running Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 RTM will not function correctly. For more information, see Knowledge Base article 811833, The effects of enabling the "System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing" security setting in Windows XP and in later versions of Windows. |
Support for Outlook and Entourage Exchange 2010 supports the following versions of Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Entourage for Mac:
- Outlook 2010
- Outlook 2007
- Outlook 2003
- Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition
- On clients running Outlook 2003, you may notice that folder updates don't occur automatically in a timely manner. This situation occurs because User Datagram Protocol (UDP) notifications aren't supported in Exchange 2010. For more information about resolving this issue, see Knowledge Base article 2009942, In Outlook 2003, e-mail messages take a long time to send and receive when you use an Exchange 2010 mailbox. However, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 are automatically compatible with this change.
- Exchange 2010 RTM: Clients running Outlook 2003 don’t use RPC encryption, which RPC Client Access requires by default. You will either need to turn off the RPC encryption requirement or configure Outlook 2003 to use RPC encryption. However, Outlook 2007 and later versions are automatically compatible with the change to RPC Client Access because they support RPC encryption by default
- Exchange 2010 SP1: In Exchange 2010 SP1, the RPC encryption requirement is disabled by default. Any new Client Access Servers (CAS) deployed in the organization will not require encryption. However, any CAS servers deployed prior to Exchange 2010 SP1, or upgraded to Exchange 2010 SP1, will retain the existing RPC encryption requirement setting.
Hardware Virtualization Microsoft supports Exchange 2010 in production on hardware virtualization software only when all the following conditions are true:
Root Machine Storage Requirements Exchange Server Storage Requirements Exchange Server Memory Requirements and Recommendations
- The hardware virtualization software is running:
- Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology
- Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology
- Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
- Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
- Any third-party hypervisor that has been validated under the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program.
- Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology
- The Exchange guest virtual machine:
- Is running Microsoft Exchange 2010.
- Is deployed on the Windows Server 2008 with SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.
- Doesn't have the Unified Messaging server role installed. All Exchange 2010 server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, are supported in a virtualization environment. This is due to the real-time response requirements associated with voice communications with the Unified Messaging server role.
- Meets all the requirements set forth previously in this topic.
When you install Exchange 2010 in a Hyper-V environment, you may get the following error: "Hub Transport Server role installation failed." For virtualized Active Directory servers, it is recommended that you disable the time sync integration component, and then set the time to a reliable external time provider before you install the Hub Transport role. This recommendation is especially important if your host is joined to the domain the virtual machine is hosting.
- Is running Microsoft Exchange 2010.
- The storage used by the Exchange guest machine for storage of Exchange data (for example, mailbox databases or Hub transport queues) can be virtual storage of a fixed size (for example, fixed virtual hard disks (VHDs) in a Hyper-V environment), SCSI pass-through storage, or Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage. Pass-through storage is storage that's configured at the host level and dedicated to one guest machine. All storage used by an Exchange guest machine for storage of Exchange data must be block-level storage because Exchange 2010 doesn't support the use of network attached storage (NAS) volumes. Also, NAS storage that's presented to the guest as block-level storage via the hypervisor isn't supported. The following virtual disk requirements apply for volumes used to store Exchange data:
- Virtual disks that dynamically expand aren't supported by Exchange.
- Virtual disks that use differencing or delta mechanisms (such as Hyper-V's differencing VHDs or snapshots) aren't supported.
In a Hyper-V environment, each fixed VHD must be less than 2,040 GB. For supported third-party hypervisors, check with the manufacturer to see if any disk size limitations exist.
- Virtual disks that dynamically expand aren't supported by Exchange.
- Only management software (for example, antivirus software, backup software, or virtual machine management software) can be deployed on the physical root machine. No other server-based applications (for example, Exchange, SQL Server, Active Directory, or SAP) should be installed on the root machine. The root machine should be dedicated to running guest virtual machines.
- Microsoft doesn't support combining Exchange high availability solutions (database availability groups (DAGs)) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root servers. DAGs are supported in hardware virtualization environments provided that the virtualization environment doesn't employ clustered root servers, or the clustered root servers have been configured to never failover or automatically move mailbox servers that are members of a DAG to another root server.
- Some hypervisors include features for taking snapshots of virtual machines. Virtual machine snapshots capture the state of a virtual machine while it's running. This feature enables you to take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine and then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a snapshot to the virtual machine. However, virtual machine snapshots aren't application aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as Exchange. As a result, making virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest virtual machine isn't supported.
- Many hardware virtualization products allow you to specify the number of virtual processors that should be allocated to each guest virtual machine. The virtual processors located in the guest virtual machine share a fixed number of logical processors in the physical system. Exchange supports a virtual processor-to-logical processor ratio no greater than 2:1. For example, a dual processor system using quad core processors contains a total of 8 logical processors in the host system. On a system with this configuration, don't allocate more than a total of 16 virtual processors to all guest virtual machines combined.
- When calculating the total number of virtual processors required by the root machine, you must also account for both I/O and operating system requirements. In most cases, the equivalent number of virtual processors required in the root operating system for a system hosting Exchange virtual machines is 2. This value should be used as a baseline for the root operating system virtual processor when calculating the overall ratio of physical cores to virtual processors. If performance monitoring of the root operating system indicates you're consuming more processor utilization than the equivalent of 2 processors, you should reduce the count of virtual processors assigned to guest virtual machines accordingly and verify that the overall virtual processor-to-physical core ratio is no greater than 2:1.
- The operating system for an Exchange guest machine must use a disk that has a size equal to at least 15 GB plus the size of the virtual memory that's allocated to the guest machine. This requirement is necessary to account for the operating system and paging file disk requirements. For example, if the guest machine is allocated 16 GB of memory, the minimum disk space needed for the guest operating system disk is 31 GB.
In addition, it's possible that guest virtual machines may be prevented from directly communicating with fibre channel or SCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) installed in the root machine. In this event, you must configure the adapters in the root machine's operating system and present the LUNs to guest virtual machines as either a virtual disk or a pass-through disk.
Root Machine Storage Requirements Each root machine has minimum disk space requirements that must be met:
- Root machines in some hardware virtualization applications may require storage space for an operating system and its components. For example, when running Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, you will need a minimum of 10 GB to meet the Windows Server 2008 R2 System Requirements for the operating system. Additional storage space will also be required to support the operating system's paging file, management software, and crash recovery (dump) files.
- Some hypervisors maintain files on the root machine that are unique to each guest virtual machine. For example, in a Hyper-V environment, a temporary memory storage file (BIN file) is created and maintained for each guest machine. The size of each BIN file is equal to the amount of memory allocated to the guest machine. In addition, other files may also be created and maintained on the host machine for each guest machine.
Exchange Server Storage Requirements The following are the requirements for storage connected to a virtualized Exchange server:
- Each Exchange guest machine must be allocated sufficient storage space on the root machine for the fixed disk that contains the guest's operating system, any temporary memory storage files in use, and related virtual machine files that are hosted on the host machine. In addition, for each Exchange guest machine, you must also allocate sufficient storage for the message queues on the Hub Transport and Edge Transport servers and sufficient storage for the databases and log files on Mailbox servers.
- Storage used by Exchange should be hosted in disk spindles that are separate from the storage that's hosting the guest virtual machine's operating system.
- Configuring iSCSI storage to use an iSCSI initiator inside an Exchange guest virtual machine is supported. However, there will be reduced performance in this configuration if the network stack inside a virtual machine isn't full-featured (for example, not all virtual network stacks support jumbo frames).
Exchange Server Memory Requirements and Recommendations Some hypervisors have the ability to oversubscribe or dynamically adjust the amount of memory available to a specific guest machine based on the perceived utilization of memory in the guest machine as compared to the needs of other guest machines managed by the same hypervisor. This technology makes sense for workloads in which memory is needed for brief periods of time and then can be surrendered for other uses. However, it doesn't make sense for workloads that are designed to use memory on an ongoing basis. Exchange, like many server applications with optimizations for performance that involve caching of data in memory, is susceptible to poor system performance and an unacceptable client experience if it doesn't have full control over the memory allocated to the physical or virtual machine on which it is running.
Many of the performance gains in recent versions of Exchange, especially those related to reduction in I/O, are based on highly efficient usage of large amounts of memory. When that memory is no longer available, the expected performance of the system can't be achieved. For this reason, memory oversubscription or dynamic adjustment of virtual machine memory should be disabled for production Exchange servers.
Memory should be sized for guest machines using the same methods as physical deployments. You can find details about memory sizing for Exchange 2010 server roles in Understanding Memory Configurations and Exchange Performance. For additional guidance, see the “Application Considerations” section of a white paper written by the Microsoft Hyper-V team, available for download at Implementing and Configuring Dynamic Memory.
Many of the performance gains in recent versions of Exchange, especially those related to reduction in I/O, are based on highly efficient usage of large amounts of memory. When that memory is no longer available, the expected performance of the system can't be achieved. For this reason, memory oversubscription or dynamic adjustment of virtual machine memory should be disabled for production Exchange servers.
Memory should be sized for guest machines using the same methods as physical deployments. You can find details about memory sizing for Exchange 2010 server roles in Understanding Memory Configurations and Exchange Performance. For additional guidance, see the “Application Considerations” section of a white paper written by the Microsoft Hyper-V team, available for download at Implementing and Configuring Dynamic Memory.
What's New in Exchange 2010 SP1
What's New in Exchange 2010 SP1
This topic provides you with an overview of important new features and functionality in Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1), which you can use when you're planning, deploying, and administering your organization. The following sections include information about changes to features and functionality that has occurred since Exchange Server 2010 RTM (release to manufacturing) and information about features and functionality first introduced in Exchange 2010 SP1. For more information about the features and functionality that was introduced at Exchange 2010 RTM, see What's New in Exchange 2010.
For information about known issues with Exchange 2010 SP1, see Release Notes for Exchange Server 2010 SP1.
New Deployment Functionality During an Exchange 2010 SP1 installation, you can now select a new option to install the required Windows roles and features for each selected Exchange 2010 SP1 server role. For more information, see New Deployment Functionality in Exchange 2010 SP1.
Client Access Server Role Improvements The improvements and new features in the Client Access server role fall under several key areas: Federation certificates, Exchange ActiveSync, SMS Sync, Integrated Rights Management, Microsoft Office Outlook Web App, and virtual directories. Each area is described in more detail in the following sections.
Federation Certificates Exchange ActiveSync SMS Sync Server-Side Information Rights Management Support Outlook Web App Improvements Reset Virtual Directory Client Throttling Policies
Federation Certificates In Exchange 2010 SP1, you can use a self-signed certificate instead of a certificate issued by a Certificate Authority to establish a federation trust with the Microsoft Federation Gateway. A self-signed certificate is automatically created and installed on Exchange servers in your organization when you use the New Federation Trust wizard in the Exchange Management Console. For more information, see Understanding Federation.
Exchange ActiveSync In Exchange 2010 SP1, you can manage Exchange ActiveSync devices using the Exchange Control Panel (ECP). Administrators can perform the following tasks:
- Manage the default access level for all mobile phones and devices.
- Set up e-mail alerts when a mobile phone or device is quarantined.
- Personalize the message that users receive when their mobile phone or device is either recognized or quarantined.
- Provide a list of quarantined mobile phones or devices.
- Create and manage Exchange ActiveSync device access rules.
- Allow or block a specific mobile phone or device for a specific user.
- List the mobile phones or devices for a specific user.
- Initiate remote wipes on mobile phones or devices.
- Remove old mobile phone or device partnerships.
- Create a rule for all users of a specific mobile phone or device or mobile phone type.
- Allow or block a specific mobile phone or device for the specific user.
SMS Sync SMS Sync is a new feature in Exchange ActiveSync that works with Windows Mobile 6.1 with the Outlook Mobile Update and with Windows Mobile 6.5. SMS Sync is the ability to synchronize messages between a mobile phone or device and an Exchange 2010 Inbox. When synchronizing a Windows Mobile phone with an Exchange 2010 mailbox, users can choose to synchronize their text messages in addition to their Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes. When synchronizing text messages, users will be able to send and receive text messages from their Inbox. This feature is dependent on the user's mobile phones or devices supporting this feature.
Server-Side Information Rights Management Support Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policies now contain support for Information Rights Management (IRM) functionality. Information Rights Management is enabled when creating a new Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy. This new functionality allows non-Windows Mobile devices to receive and view protected e-mails. When the IRMEnabled property is configured on the Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy and IRM is enabled for Client Access Servers, the protected e-mail will be decrypted on the server before it is downloaded to the mobile phone or device. The downloaded e-mail will be downloaded with additional properties that indicate the restrictions sent with the original e-mail. Protected messages will only be decrypted and downloaded if the mobile phone or device connects to the Client Access server using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
Outlook Web App Improvements The following is a list of the new Outlook Web App functionality in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- Improved management of the relationship between Office Communications Server and Outlook Web App. Configuration is stored in Active Directory instead of a web.config file and can be managed via cmdlet.
- Twenty-seven themes are available, and they have new administrative options:
- Set default theme with the DefaultTheme parameter by using either the Set-OwaMailboxPolicy or the Set-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet.
- Create custom themes by modifying existing themes.
- Control the order themes are listed in Outlook Web App.
- Set default theme with the DefaultTheme parameter by using either the Set-OwaMailboxPolicy or the Set-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet.
- By default, attachment types that are marked as Force Save will be excluded from security checks for XML or HTML. You can change this behavior by setting the ForceSaveAttachmentFilteringEnabled parameter to
$trueby using either the Set-OwaMailboxPolicy or the Set-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet.
- Users can change unexpired passwords by default. In Exchange 2010 SP1, you can also enable users to reset expired passwords. See Configuring the Change Password Feature in Outlook Web App.
Reset Virtual Directory In Exchange 2010 SP1, you can use the new Reset Client Access Virtual Directory wizard to reset one or more Client Access server virtual directories. The new wizard makes it easier to reset a Client Access server virtual directory. One reason that you might want to reset a Client Access server virtual directory is to resolve an issue related to a damaged file on a virtual directory. In addition to resetting virtual directories, the wizard creates a log file that includes the settings for each virtual directory that you choose to reset. For more information, see Reset Client Access Virtual Directories.
Client Throttling Policies You can use client throttling policies to help you manage performance of your Client Access servers. Consider the following changes as you use client throttling policies to manage performance when running Exchange 2010 SP1.
- In Exchange 2010 RTM, only the policies to limit the number of concurrent client connections were enabled by default. In Exchange 2010 SP1, all client throttling policies are enabled by default.
- In Exchange 2010 RTM, when the thresholds defined on a latency-based client throttling policy parameter such as EWSPercentTimeInCAS were exceeded, Exchange would cause the transactions and connections to fail. In Exchange 2010 SP1, exceeding the thresholds defined on a latency-based throttling policy parameter will not cause a failure. Instead, Exchange will delay transactions and connections until the transaction rate is within the policy limits. Such transaction and connection delays will usually not be apparent to end users. Client throttling policy parameters with a hard quota limits such as EWSMaxSubscriptions will cause a failure when exceeded. As an administrator, you can monitor the impact of your performance policies and make adjustments as needed.
- Two new cmdlets, Get-ThrottlingPolicyAssociation and Set-ThrottlingPolicyAssociation, help you manage and apply client throttling polices to specific objects.
Improvements in Transport Functionality The following is a list of new Transport functionality in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- MailTips access control over organizational relationships
- Enhanced monitoring and troubleshooting features for MailTips
- Enhanced monitoring and troubleshooting features for message tracking
- Message throttling enhancements
- Shadow redundancy promotion
- SMTP failover and load balancing improvements
- Support for extended protection on SMTP connections
- Send connector changes to reduce NDRs over well-defined connections
Permissions Functionality The following is a brief description of new permissions features and enhancements in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- Database scope support With database scopes, you can control which databases mailboxes can be created for a given set of administrators and also control which databases they can manage. For more information about database scopes, see Understanding Management Role Scopes.
- Active Directory split permissions Active Directory split permissions enable you to completely separate the administrative capabilities of Exchange administrators from your Active Directory administrators. The ability to create and remove Active Directory users and groups and manage non-Exchange attributes of Active Directory objects by Exchange administrators and servers has been removed in Exchange 2010 SP1. For more information about Active Directory split permissions, see Understanding Split Permissions.
- Improved user interface You can now create and manage management role groups and management role assignment policies in the Exchange Control Panel (ECP). This includes adding and removing management roles to role groups and role assignment policies, adding and removing members to and from role groups, and assigning users to role assignment policies. For more information about how to manage role groups and role assignment policies, see the following topics:
Exchange Store and Mailbox Database Functionality The following is a list of new store and mailbox database functionality in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- With the New-MailboxRepairRequest cmdlet, you can detect and repair mailbox and database corruption issues.
- Store limits were increased for administrative access.
- The Database Log Growth Troubleshooter (Troubleshoot-DatabaseSpace.ps1) is a new script that allows you to control excessive log growth of mailbox databases.
- Public Folders client permissions support was added to the Exchange Management Console (EMC).
Mailbox and Recipients Functionality The following is a list of new mailbox and recipient functionality included in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- Calendar Repair Assistant supports more scenarios than were available in Exchange 2010 RTM.
- Mailbox Assistants are now all throttle-based (changed from time-based in Exchange 2010 RTM).
- Internet calendar publishing allows users in your Exchange organization to share their Outlook calendars with a broad Internet audience.
- Importing and exporting .pst files now uses the Mailbox Replication service and doesn't require Outlook.
- Hierarchical address book support allows you to create and configure your address lists and offline address books in a hierarchical view.
- Distribution group naming policies allow you to configure string text that will be appended or prepended to a distribution group's name when it's created.
- Soft-delete of mailboxes after move completion.
High Availability and Site Resilience Functionality The following is a list of new high availability and site resilience functionality included in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- Continuous replication - block mode
- Active mailbox database redistribution
- Enhanced datacenter activation coordination mode support
- New and enhanced management and monitoring scripts
- Exchange Management Console user interface enhancements
- Improvements in failover performance
Messaging Policy and Compliance Functionality The following is a list of new messaging policy and compliance functionality included in Exchange 2010 SP1:
- Provision personal archive on a different mailbox database
- Import historical mailbox data to personal archive
- Delegate access to personal archive
- New retention policy user interface
- Support for creating retention policy tags for Calendar and Tasks default folders
- Opt-in personal tags
- Multi-Mailbox Search preview
- Annotations in Multi-Mailbox Search
- Multi-Mailbox Search data de-duplication
- WebReady Document Viewing of IRM-protected messages in Outlook Web App
- IRM in Exchange ActiveSync for protocol-level IRM
- IRM logging
- Mailbox audit logging
Unified Messaging Server Role Improvements The Unified Messaging server role has been improved and has added new features in Exchange 2010 SP1. To use some of these features, you must correctly deploy Microsoft Lync Server 2010 in your environment. The following is an overview of all the new features in Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging:
- UM reporting The reports for Call Statistics and User Call Logs found in the Exchange Management Console are displayed in the Exchange Control Panel.
- UM management in the Exchange Control Panel You can use the ECP to manage UM components in a cross-premises environment.
- Cross-Forest UM-enabled mailbox migration In Exchange 2010 SP1, you can use the New-MoveRequest cmdlet with the Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) to move a UM-enabled mailbox within a local forest and multiple forests in an enterprise.
- Outlook Voice Access improvements Outlook Voice Access users can log on to their Exchange 2010 mailbox and choose the order to listen to unread voice mail messages, from the oldest message first or the newest message first.
- Caller Name Display support Exchange 2010 SP1 includes support for enhanced caller ID resolution for displaying names for voice mails from unresolved numbers using Caller Name Display (CND).
- Test-ExchangeUMCallFlow cmdlet With this Exchange 2010 SP1 cmdlet, you can test UM connectivity and call flow.
- New UM Dial Plan wizard An additional page has been added to the New UM Dial Plan wizard that allows you to add a UM server to the dial plan.
- Lync Server 2010 Support Migrating SIP URI dial plans and Message Waiting Indicator (MWI) notifications in a cross-premises environment has been added.
- Secondary UM dial plan support You can add a secondary UM dial plan for a UM-enabled user.
- UM language packs added New UM language packs are now available in Exchange 2010 SP1. In addition, the Spanish (Spain) (es-ES) UM language pack available for Exchange 2010 SP1 now includes Voice Mail Preview, a feature that wasn’t available in the Exchange 2010 RTM release of that language pack.
- Call answering rules improvements There are three updates to Call Answering Rules for UM-enabled users in SP1.
- Unified Communications Managed API/speech platform improvements Beginning with Exchange 2010 SP1, the UM server relies on Unified Communications Managed API v. 2.0 (UCMA) for its underlying SIP signaling and speech processing.
- UM auto attendant update In Exchange 2010 SP1, a UM auto attendant will play only the holiday greeting on a holiday.
Audit Logging Improvements Exchange 2010 SP1 provides improvements in functionality related to administrator audit logging and new functionality for mailbox audit logging:
- Improvements in administrator audit logging Exchange 2010 enhances the administrator audit logging functionality by providing you with the ability to perform searches of the admin audit log using the Exchange Management Shell. You can search on cmdlet and parameter names, date, the user who ran the command, and more. The results generated by your search can be displayed on the screen or e-mailed to a recipient you specify and viewed as an XML file. And, because all the administrative interfaces run Shell cmdlets in the background, the actions that occur in all the interfaces can be logged.
For more information, see Overview of Administrator Audit Logging.
- New mailbox audit logging Exchange 2010 SP1 introduces new mailbox audit logging functionality to allow you to track mailbox access by administrators, delegates, and mailbox owners, and actions taken on mailbox items such as moving or deleting a message, using SendAs or SendOnBehalf rights to send messages, and accessing a mailbox folder or a message. You can use the ECP to generate a report of non-owner mailbox access and use the Shell to search mailbox audit logs. For more information, see Understanding Mailbox Audit Logging.
- The Exchange Control Panel also provides several reports which are generated based on the audit logs in Exchange 2010 SP1.
Support for Coexistence with Exchange Online Exchange 2010 SP1 includes functionality that supports coexistence with Exchange Online. However, Exchange Online has not yet been updated to support the following Exchange 2010 SP1 functionality:
- Migration of UM-enabled mailboxes The New-MoveRequest cmdlet can be used with the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service (MRS) to move a UM-enabled mailbox within a coexistence environment.
- IRM support for coexistence IRM is fully supported for cross-premises deployments. The tenant administrator can export the trusted publishing domain from the on-premises Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) server and import it to the cloud-based service. This functionality allows IRM-protected messages to be decrypted in the cloud, and cloud mailbox users to send IRM-protected messages that on-premises mailbox users can decrypt and access.
- Remote Mailboxes A new set of SP1 cmdlets allow you to create and manage a mail-enabled user in the on-premises Active Directory site and at the same time create and manage the associated mailbox in the cloud-based service. The cmdlets are:
- Transport Updated features in Transport help ensure that message flow remains protected between users regardless of where their mailboxes are located. Enhanced Transport features such as MailTips, delivery reports, and message moderation also support this deployment scenario. To learn more about Transport in a coexistence with Exchange Online scenario, see Understanding Transport in a Cross-Premises Deployment.
Support for Multi-Tenancy With Exchange 2010 SP1 built-in multi-tenant support, service providers that use Microsoft Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) no longer need a solution such as Microsoft Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.5 to host multiple organizations. Multi-tenant support in Exchange 2010 SP1 provides the core feature set of Microsoft Exchange that can be deployed to multiple customers in a single installation, and it also provides ease of management and flexibility of provided features to end-users.
In addition to including most of the features and functionality available in Exchange 2010 SP1 Enterprise deployments, the multi-tenant solution available for Exchange 2010 SP1 also includes features and functionality that allow you to create and manage tenant organizations.
In addition to including most of the features and functionality available in Exchange 2010 SP1 Enterprise deployments, the multi-tenant solution available for Exchange 2010 SP1 also includes features and functionality that allow you to create and manage tenant organizations.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Exchange Server 2010 vs Lotus Domino 8.5
We dig deep into the latest builds of Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange, two enterprise class mail servers, and here we have discussed about some of the key concern areas that will help you in planning & deploying them
Whenever an enterprise needs to deploy a mail server, planning, preparation and requirement analysis are the top priorities on their mind. An enterprise needs to decide upon a system that blends well with their strategic business challenges. For instance, the technology director needs to deliver secure and compliant communications tools to support a highly distributed workspace. Reducing hardware costs and operational overheads are the priority points for the IT managers. Globally distributed customers and partners, communication overload, increasing security and the high cost of communications are just some of the connectivity challenges that the enterprise might face. Thus, protection and compliance, ability to access anywhere, flexibility and reliability are some of the features integral to a messaging solution which may lead to its adoption in that enterprise. A messaging server should be optimized for software and services.
Microsoft’s exchange server really came of age with the release of version 2007. Exchange 2007 offers a solid and complete messaging platform. The beta release of Exchange 2010 serves up even more features and functionality and looks like it may be the most robust Exchange offering yet.
Exchange has long enjoyed the lion's share of the business messaging platform market. Does this mean that it is the best e-mail platform offering out there? Some would argue that isn't the case.
IBM's Domino platform with Lotus Notes still has a strong following. Die-hard Lotus Notes fans cite stability and security as the primary benefits for eschewing Exchange for Notes. The CRN Test Center took a side-by-side view at the two latest releases of each platform: Exchange 2010 and Lotus Domino 8.5, and their respective clients—Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes client 8.
Bases for choosing mail servers
Deployment strategies: Planning an Exchange Server or Lotus Domino or any other mailing solution, the deployment part must be carefully analyzed. An enterprise often has to deal with budgets and other challenges before they are ready to deploy it fully. As it is more targeted to larger organizations, it therefore stresses on a distributed deployment plan with lots of individual servers. Depending upon the enterprises one can either opt for the Standard Edition or the Enterprise Edition of Exchange Server. However, larger distributions deployments might be bit expensive considering both hardware and software standpoints but these may be negligible or accepted when compared with the service they provide.
Evaluate your existing environments: An enterprise decision maker must take out time to do a thorough evaluation and capture the baseline of the existing server infrastructure. This will help them to better understand and compare how the upgraded environment would be beneficial to him, if at all. Documenting the pre-existing conditions and problems and all the mandatory resources available would do the enterprise a world of good in making the leap to a newer and better environment.
Prediction: The enterprise needs to get a clear idea of what the probable economic or managerial problems they could face and be prepared to tackle the predictable problems beforehand.
Interoperability and customization: Exchange Server being a single unified communication system was designed to be run as a part of the Windows eco-system & requires a 64-bit architecture. It is pretty much a straight out of the box software product.
Lotus Notes, as the part of Domino platform, is highly customizable and if the developers need to integrate some custom components, there are some modules available. They also provide support for the integration of �mashups� which are the Web Apps that help you in integrating the data from multiple sources into one single interface.
Deploying the mail servers: Installation of both the servers was pretty much smooth as the architecture on which we deployed give us an extraedge. The deployment was on the Dell's 'Power Edge M710' blade server with 144 GB of RAM with Intel's Xeon processor 5500 series. We installed the trial versions of both the mail servers on the Windows Server 2008 R2, Enterprise Edition. There wasn't much issues with the Lotus Domino installation but there were some concerns regarding Exchange Server. For Exchange server, most of the problems came with the Hub Transport Role and Mailbox Server Role.
Comparing the installation part for both the mail servers, once the ADS, roles, features and other necessary services are configured, then everything goes very well with the flow. For, both the mailing servers only the problem arises when you don't have a dedicated domain name. So, the best solution we could find was to deploy it locally with some basic configurations.
Installation and deployment
E-mail servers almost always require some sort of preplanning before actual installation and deployment. Launching the setup.exe file of Exchange 2010 brings up a splash screen with links to useful information.
There are several components that must be installed before embarking on an installation of Microsoft Exchange 2010. The setup.exe splash screen lists and links to each component; all are available as free downloads from Microsoft's Web site. Pre-requisites for installing Exchange 2010 are the .Net 3.5 Framework, Windows Remote Management 2.0 and Power Shell v2. IIS components.
Of course, having to download each component and then reboot the server after each is installed adds to the length of time it takes to get Exchange installed. Once that is done, Exchange can be installed with typical settings or with customized settings. Custom settings refer to the installation of Unified Messaging, an Edge Transport server role or the Exchange Management Console.
Another time-consuming yet necessary part of the Exchange installation are the Readiness Checks. The system will check for additional pre-requisites needed to install Exchange. Any Active Directory or DNS issues could really set back the installation time during the Readiness Check phase. However, the time it takes to do the check is worth it. This is a big improvement over legacy versions of Exchange.
Installation of Lotus Domino Messaging Server moved like lightning in comparison. To install the core Domino and Lotus Notes platform took about two minutes, although the process was not completely glitch-free.
After installing Domino, attempting to launch Domino as a Windows Service gave a "Notes.ini file for this server is invalid error" message. There seemed to be an issue with the installer. It appeared to be configured to write files to a directory path that did not exist on our Windows 2008 Server. Modifying the .ini file to the path containing the appropriate files corrected the error.
Domino installed with the following features by default: templates, certificate management, Web services data files, Dojo, XPages, Lotus iNotes, Sametime integration, performance monitoring, plus a host of other features. You get a lot of extra goodies with a Domino install.
After installation, the server had a database replicator, an agent manager and other tasks that can be added to customize the environment. Each task is listed in the interface with a description that explains what that task is.
For deployment, we tested connecting each e-mail client to each e-mail server. Outlook is a snap to configure. Once a user has a mailbox set up, the client also needs to point to the server. The Lotus Client configuration is a bit more involved; not only does the server name have to be specified, a mail file and User ID file must exist for the user.
For Installation, points go to Lotus. The process is smooth because the installer contains all of the necessary files to get Domino up and running in a relatively short amount of time.
Interoperability and customization
Lotus Notes as part of the Domino platform supports a multitude of operating systems. A 32-bit or 64-bit version of Domino can be installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Linux, Sun Solaris or IBM AIX.
In contrast, not surprisingly, Exchange Server 2010 is a single unified communications system designed to be run as part of the Windows ecosystem. Exchange 2010 also requires 64-bit architecture.
Although there are a vast amount of granular controls and varied configuration options, Exchange is pretty much a straight-out-of-the-box software product, and there isn't exactly a lot of room for integrating custom components.
Lotus Notes, on the Domino platform, is highly customizable and there are modules for developers to integrate custom components. Lotus Notes supports the integration of mash-ups—Web applications that integrate data from multiple sources into one single interface. Composite applications are another way to customize the Notes environment and are weightier than mash-ups.
IBM also offers a Lotus Expeditor Toolkit. It is used to create custom plug-ins for not only Lotus Notes but for Lotus Sametime, the unified communications platform from Lotus and for its application suite, Lotus Symphony.
In terms of interoperability and customization, Lotus is the clear winner over Exchange. However, all of that customization horsepower can lead to a level of complexity for Notes administrators. An added plus for Lotus Notes is the ability to install on multiple platforms and OSes.
Feature set
A big advantage Microsoft has over IBM with unified messaging is that all modules necessary to create a true unified messaging solution are incorporated into Exchange 2010. To get that same level of functionality with IBM's solution requires the installation of multiple IBM products.
Exchange is so feature-rich that a lot of customization is not necessary for most organizations. For example, incorporating mobile messaging into Exchange only requires enabling ActiveSync. ActiveSync is also supported almost across the board by the major mobile platform vendors.
Exchange 2010 also comes with a lot of enhancements to legacy Exchange. One of the major new features is the ability to integrate voicemail into Outlook Web Access. In fact, voicemail preview is a new feature that provides a text-based preview of voicemail messages.
Yet another new feature is Exchange federation. This allows for the cross-premises sharing of resources, including federated message delivery and calendar sharing both within and outside an organization. Exchange 2010 also lets users share calendars with users outside the company. Access permissions and controls are available to keep such communication secure.
There is now also support for SATA. Exchange 2010 can utilize Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) desktop-class hard disk drives.
With Exchange 2010, e-mail administrators can opt to give end users quite a bit of control over that user's own messaging environment. The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) is a Web-based interface that enables users to "self-help." Users can perform tasks as varied as running delivery reports to managing distribution groups.
There is even enhanced device security in Exchange 2010. Per-user mobile device policies can be set, such as allowing attachments to specifying PIN requirements. Administrators can also deem which mobile device can sync to Exchange and which to block.
Many Exchange users will welcome the introduction of Mail Tips. This feature walks a user through checking a message before sending to avoid potentially embarrassing sent messages. Unfortunately, Mail Tips is not supported in Outlook 2007—only in Outlook 2010 or the OWA that comes with Exchange 2010.
The Management Console has the same interface introduced in Exchange 2007. Almost all major tasks needed to get Exchange up and running are done through user-friendly wizards. Active Directory is also tightly intertwined in this version of Exchange; end-user mailboxes are created directly in the Exchange Management Console rather than having to go outside to the Active Directory Users and Computers module.
Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 also have feature enhancements. However, some of the features are ones that have long been in Exchange and Outlook. In the latest Lotus 8.5 client, a new feature being touted is auto-completion of an e-mail address while composing a message. Another feature, the ability to forward contacts as a vCard, is also one we have already seen in Exchange.
Still, some of the new features are quite innovative and really take advantage of the customizability for which Notes and Domino are known. One such feature is the ability to mash up your calendar; you can add activities, private or public Google calendars or other Notes calendars to yours.
Notes 8.5 also comes with built-in social networking capabilities, as Lotus Connections can be integrated into Lotus Notes. With it, users can create blogs, communities, bookmarks and more. On the security side, Notes share log-in now lets users start Lotus Notes and use their Notes IDs without having to provide Notes passwords.
Notes 8.5 has an interface to manage the Domino server. It's not Web-based—it's an actual client that gets installed onto a machine independent of the Domino server. Both this interface as well as the Notes client, although perfectly acceptable in how they run their features, have a dated, technologically primitive look to them.
For features, we are going to give Exchange the win. Exchange 2010's new features aid in bringing a user an entire new experience. In Lotus, not as much. Lotus client 8.5 resembles pretty much the Lotus clients of the past.
Performance
We were simply blown away with the performance of Exchange 2010. Microsoft has achieved about a 70 percent performance improvement over Exchange 2007. The client fires up quickly and mail routing, internally, is fast.
Lotus Notes, on comparable hardware, gave us slower performance. The client took almost 40 seconds to load as opposed to the 10 seconds it took to load Outlook. Internal mail routing speed was on par with Exchange. There was some latency also with the Domino Administrator console syncing up to the Domino server.
Whenever an enterprise needs to deploy a mail server, planning, preparation and requirement analysis are the top priorities on their mind. An enterprise needs to decide upon a system that blends well with their strategic business challenges. For instance, the technology director needs to deliver secure and compliant communications tools to support a highly distributed workspace. Reducing hardware costs and operational overheads are the priority points for the IT managers. Globally distributed customers and partners, communication overload, increasing security and the high cost of communications are just some of the connectivity challenges that the enterprise might face. Thus, protection and compliance, ability to access anywhere, flexibility and reliability are some of the features integral to a messaging solution which may lead to its adoption in that enterprise. A messaging server should be optimized for software and services.
Microsoft’s exchange server really came of age with the release of version 2007. Exchange 2007 offers a solid and complete messaging platform. The beta release of Exchange 2010 serves up even more features and functionality and looks like it may be the most robust Exchange offering yet.
Exchange has long enjoyed the lion's share of the business messaging platform market. Does this mean that it is the best e-mail platform offering out there? Some would argue that isn't the case.
IBM's Domino platform with Lotus Notes still has a strong following. Die-hard Lotus Notes fans cite stability and security as the primary benefits for eschewing Exchange for Notes. The CRN Test Center took a side-by-side view at the two latest releases of each platform: Exchange 2010 and Lotus Domino 8.5, and their respective clients—Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes client 8.
Deployment strategies: Planning an Exchange Server or Lotus Domino or any other mailing solution, the deployment part must be carefully analyzed. An enterprise often has to deal with budgets and other challenges before they are ready to deploy it fully. As it is more targeted to larger organizations, it therefore stresses on a distributed deployment plan with lots of individual servers. Depending upon the enterprises one can either opt for the Standard Edition or the Enterprise Edition of Exchange Server. However, larger distributions deployments might be bit expensive considering both hardware and software standpoints but these may be negligible or accepted when compared with the service they provide.
Evaluate your existing environments: An enterprise decision maker must take out time to do a thorough evaluation and capture the baseline of the existing server infrastructure. This will help them to better understand and compare how the upgraded environment would be beneficial to him, if at all. Documenting the pre-existing conditions and problems and all the mandatory resources available would do the enterprise a world of good in making the leap to a newer and better environment.
Prediction: The enterprise needs to get a clear idea of what the probable economic or managerial problems they could face and be prepared to tackle the predictable problems beforehand.
Interoperability and customization: Exchange Server being a single unified communication system was designed to be run as a part of the Windows eco-system & requires a 64-bit architecture. It is pretty much a straight out of the box software product.
Lotus Notes, as the part of Domino platform, is highly customizable and if the developers need to integrate some custom components, there are some modules available. They also provide support for the integration of �mashups� which are the Web Apps that help you in integrating the data from multiple sources into one single interface.
Deploying the mail servers: Installation of both the servers was pretty much smooth as the architecture on which we deployed give us an extraedge. The deployment was on the Dell's 'Power Edge M710' blade server with 144 GB of RAM with Intel's Xeon processor 5500 series. We installed the trial versions of both the mail servers on the Windows Server 2008 R2, Enterprise Edition. There wasn't much issues with the Lotus Domino installation but there were some concerns regarding Exchange Server. For Exchange server, most of the problems came with the Hub Transport Role and Mailbox Server Role.
| MS Exchange Server 2010 | Lotus Domino 8.5 |
| Features 1. Make your mailbox search more easy: As the name implies, it gives the designated person the capability to perform organization-level searches across the users mailbox.This is a pretty decent feature as it helps the enterprises to perform e-discovery. 2. Exchange Control Panel: Integrated into OWA, this is a pretty decent addition for the administrators as it allows them to perform some of the common management tasks remotely using a web interface. 3. Database Availability Group: Exchange has taken a step further as this feature allows you to host copies of individual databases by designating multiple servers. 4. Voice mail and more: It was there in previous version, wherein your voice messages can be saved as email attachments But now with the introduction of speech recognition engine it helps to automatically transcribe voice mail messages. | Features 1. XPages: This new tool introduced in Lotus Domino 8.5 wil help developers to create Domino web apps more quickly and efficiently. The apps that are built using the Xpages are supported for Web use only. 2. ID vault: as the name suggests, these vaults can store ID files on the server, and in case the client forgets the password it can pass them back the required information. Not only this it helps to secure and recover,reset passwords, recover lost ID's and a lot more. 3. DAOS: with this new feature Domino Attatchment and Object service, it helps in managing a shared repository that are present on the disk by referring the objects that are available on the disk. The other benefits includes throughput & reduced backup space. 4. Talking about Directory Independence; this feature was focused to store groups and person information in an LDAP directory. The goal of the DI is to ease off the burden for the administrators who have the responsibility of deploying and managing multiple directories. So it gives you the option, that instead of using Domino directory, you also get the option to use LDAP directory. |
Installation and deployment
E-mail servers almost always require some sort of preplanning before actual installation and deployment. Launching the setup.exe file of Exchange 2010 brings up a splash screen with links to useful information.
There are several components that must be installed before embarking on an installation of Microsoft Exchange 2010. The setup.exe splash screen lists and links to each component; all are available as free downloads from Microsoft's Web site. Pre-requisites for installing Exchange 2010 are the .Net 3.5 Framework, Windows Remote Management 2.0 and Power Shell v2. IIS components.
Of course, having to download each component and then reboot the server after each is installed adds to the length of time it takes to get Exchange installed. Once that is done, Exchange can be installed with typical settings or with customized settings. Custom settings refer to the installation of Unified Messaging, an Edge Transport server role or the Exchange Management Console.
Another time-consuming yet necessary part of the Exchange installation are the Readiness Checks. The system will check for additional pre-requisites needed to install Exchange. Any Active Directory or DNS issues could really set back the installation time during the Readiness Check phase. However, the time it takes to do the check is worth it. This is a big improvement over legacy versions of Exchange.
Installation of Lotus Domino Messaging Server moved like lightning in comparison. To install the core Domino and Lotus Notes platform took about two minutes, although the process was not completely glitch-free.
After installing Domino, attempting to launch Domino as a Windows Service gave a "Notes.ini file for this server is invalid error" message. There seemed to be an issue with the installer. It appeared to be configured to write files to a directory path that did not exist on our Windows 2008 Server. Modifying the .ini file to the path containing the appropriate files corrected the error.
Domino installed with the following features by default: templates, certificate management, Web services data files, Dojo, XPages, Lotus iNotes, Sametime integration, performance monitoring, plus a host of other features. You get a lot of extra goodies with a Domino install.
After installation, the server had a database replicator, an agent manager and other tasks that can be added to customize the environment. Each task is listed in the interface with a description that explains what that task is.
For deployment, we tested connecting each e-mail client to each e-mail server. Outlook is a snap to configure. Once a user has a mailbox set up, the client also needs to point to the server. The Lotus Client configuration is a bit more involved; not only does the server name have to be specified, a mail file and User ID file must exist for the user.
For Installation, points go to Lotus. The process is smooth because the installer contains all of the necessary files to get Domino up and running in a relatively short amount of time.
Interoperability and customization
Lotus Notes as part of the Domino platform supports a multitude of operating systems. A 32-bit or 64-bit version of Domino can be installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Linux, Sun Solaris or IBM AIX.
In contrast, not surprisingly, Exchange Server 2010 is a single unified communications system designed to be run as part of the Windows ecosystem. Exchange 2010 also requires 64-bit architecture.
Although there are a vast amount of granular controls and varied configuration options, Exchange is pretty much a straight-out-of-the-box software product, and there isn't exactly a lot of room for integrating custom components.
Lotus Notes, on the Domino platform, is highly customizable and there are modules for developers to integrate custom components. Lotus Notes supports the integration of mash-ups—Web applications that integrate data from multiple sources into one single interface. Composite applications are another way to customize the Notes environment and are weightier than mash-ups.
IBM also offers a Lotus Expeditor Toolkit. It is used to create custom plug-ins for not only Lotus Notes but for Lotus Sametime, the unified communications platform from Lotus and for its application suite, Lotus Symphony.
In terms of interoperability and customization, Lotus is the clear winner over Exchange. However, all of that customization horsepower can lead to a level of complexity for Notes administrators. An added plus for Lotus Notes is the ability to install on multiple platforms and OSes.
Feature set
A big advantage Microsoft has over IBM with unified messaging is that all modules necessary to create a true unified messaging solution are incorporated into Exchange 2010. To get that same level of functionality with IBM's solution requires the installation of multiple IBM products.
Exchange is so feature-rich that a lot of customization is not necessary for most organizations. For example, incorporating mobile messaging into Exchange only requires enabling ActiveSync. ActiveSync is also supported almost across the board by the major mobile platform vendors.
Exchange 2010 also comes with a lot of enhancements to legacy Exchange. One of the major new features is the ability to integrate voicemail into Outlook Web Access. In fact, voicemail preview is a new feature that provides a text-based preview of voicemail messages.
Yet another new feature is Exchange federation. This allows for the cross-premises sharing of resources, including federated message delivery and calendar sharing both within and outside an organization. Exchange 2010 also lets users share calendars with users outside the company. Access permissions and controls are available to keep such communication secure.
There is now also support for SATA. Exchange 2010 can utilize Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) desktop-class hard disk drives.
With Exchange 2010, e-mail administrators can opt to give end users quite a bit of control over that user's own messaging environment. The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) is a Web-based interface that enables users to "self-help." Users can perform tasks as varied as running delivery reports to managing distribution groups.
There is even enhanced device security in Exchange 2010. Per-user mobile device policies can be set, such as allowing attachments to specifying PIN requirements. Administrators can also deem which mobile device can sync to Exchange and which to block.
Many Exchange users will welcome the introduction of Mail Tips. This feature walks a user through checking a message before sending to avoid potentially embarrassing sent messages. Unfortunately, Mail Tips is not supported in Outlook 2007—only in Outlook 2010 or the OWA that comes with Exchange 2010.
The Management Console has the same interface introduced in Exchange 2007. Almost all major tasks needed to get Exchange up and running are done through user-friendly wizards. Active Directory is also tightly intertwined in this version of Exchange; end-user mailboxes are created directly in the Exchange Management Console rather than having to go outside to the Active Directory Users and Computers module.
Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 also have feature enhancements. However, some of the features are ones that have long been in Exchange and Outlook. In the latest Lotus 8.5 client, a new feature being touted is auto-completion of an e-mail address while composing a message. Another feature, the ability to forward contacts as a vCard, is also one we have already seen in Exchange.
Still, some of the new features are quite innovative and really take advantage of the customizability for which Notes and Domino are known. One such feature is the ability to mash up your calendar; you can add activities, private or public Google calendars or other Notes calendars to yours.
Notes 8.5 also comes with built-in social networking capabilities, as Lotus Connections can be integrated into Lotus Notes. With it, users can create blogs, communities, bookmarks and more. On the security side, Notes share log-in now lets users start Lotus Notes and use their Notes IDs without having to provide Notes passwords.
Notes 8.5 has an interface to manage the Domino server. It's not Web-based—it's an actual client that gets installed onto a machine independent of the Domino server. Both this interface as well as the Notes client, although perfectly acceptable in how they run their features, have a dated, technologically primitive look to them.
For features, we are going to give Exchange the win. Exchange 2010's new features aid in bringing a user an entire new experience. In Lotus, not as much. Lotus client 8.5 resembles pretty much the Lotus clients of the past.
Performance
We were simply blown away with the performance of Exchange 2010. Microsoft has achieved about a 70 percent performance improvement over Exchange 2007. The client fires up quickly and mail routing, internally, is fast.
Lotus Notes, on comparable hardware, gave us slower performance. The client took almost 40 seconds to load as opposed to the 10 seconds it took to load Outlook. Internal mail routing speed was on par with Exchange. There was some latency also with the Domino Administrator console syncing up to the Domino server.
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