Exchange 2010 Features and benefits

March 16th, 2010 by admin 1 comment »

Microsoft Exchange feature details are Mail box databases, Role based access and control, transport resiliency, remote power shell, online move mailbox, web-based administration, mail-box resiliency,  and there are many other features in Microsoft Exchange 2010. Some of the prerequisites of Exchange 2010 server are it is important to purchase Windows Server 2008 license. The edition of Windows Server that is required by the business or company, also depends on the features of Exchange Server 2010, which will be used in the offices.  For instance, Exchange 2010 servers that use Mailbox Resiliency features for high availability, they have to use either Windows Server 2008 or Data Center editions for its clustering features and for all other Exchange 2010 scenarios, Windows Server Standard stands good.

Therefore with the above features and benefits, the efficiency of Microsoft company products and also the working efficiency of Microsoft Exchange 2010 is also revealed for the benefit of customers. Customers can always make an assessment about the product and can take huge benefit and advantage from the products of Microsoft and can deliver quality work to the clients and customers.

With technology growing at a fast pace, it has become very important that businesses have to increase their volume of work quickly and efficiently and in this mode of working method, access to fast paced technology has become much necessary and software products as they have been helping many upcoming businesses to help its volume of business and growth, Microsoft products are enhancing to the quality of work and also working towards growth and prosperity of thousands of small and medium businesses around the world.  In fact Microsoft has been working towards the growth and development of small and medium businesses.  In this method of work, Microsoft Exchange has been an outstanding product in giving the best output through its performance.

For the future and for the present, Microsoft company will continue to do its research in giving the best products and to help business community to take huge advantage from its performance.  This is also in the interest of global technology companies which are working very hard to give the best to the entire business community.  Some of the important points to be noted here is that, many of consumers may not be aware of the new products of Microsoft company and it is important to advertise and campaign about the latest products of Microsoft company through mass media such as Internet and television.

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Unified Messaging or Voicemail – A new attraction in Exchange 2010

March 8th, 2010 by admin No comments »


Voicemail was added as a core component to Exchange 2007 with its release, but there were not many organizations that chose to implement Exchange 2007Voicemail. With the release of Exchange 2010, more Unified Messaging servers are being implemented, the reason being that core features are included in the Exchange update.

In terms of technology, the voicemail of Exchange 2010 provides all the capabilities as any of the voicemail systems in the market. Thus the Exchange 2010 is ‘as good’ in technology as anybody else in the market. However there are a couple of reasons which make Exchange 2010 Voicemail stand ahead of all others and why organizations are implementing it:

  • Conversion of Voice to Text: a new polished feature of Exchange 2010 where your voice messages are automatically converted to text and saved with the voice message in the form of text. So if you receive an attachment containing a voice message, you also get its transcription in text with it. This feature is extremely useful when you are out, you will not have to give back a call to the voice mail system for listening to your voicemail and you can just read the text message present along with it.
  • Redundancy in Voicemail: another reason being that exchange mailbox is being followed for the user by Exchange Unified Messaging Server. There are new Database Availability Groups with the new Exchange and an organization can maintain up to sixteen copies of mailbox of a user for the purpose of fault tolerance and high availability. There is a need thus for voicemail system to know the location of the mailbox. Exchange 2010 does provide this facility whereas a lot of third party voicemails do not.

Thus with having all the similar features as of any voicemail system and the above two added advantages, the Exchange 2010 voicemail is getting increasingly popular.

Following are the steps to install Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging. :

First you have to install the Unified Messaging Role-

  • Go to control panel
  • Select Programs and Features
  • Select Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.
  • Click on the Change button
  • Enter Exchange Maintenance mode.
  • Click Next.
  • Select the check box stating Unified Messaging Role
  • Click Next.
  • Readiness checks are performed by installer.
  • Click on the Install button
  • Unified Messaging server role will get installed.
  • After the successful completion of installation, click Finish.

After the installation of Unified Messaging Server Role, complete the following post-install configuration jobs for basic installation:

  • Form a UM dial plan.
  • Associate with it subscriber access numbers.
  • Create a gateway of UM IP.
  • Associate the dial plan with the UM server.
  • Form a UM Auto Attendant.
  • Form the hunt groups.
  • Enable the mailboxes for UM.
  • Test the functionality.

The new feature is definitely worth working with and getting familiar with.

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Database Corruption While Replication of Public folders

March 8th, 2010 by admin 8 comments »


While talking about Microsoft Exchange Server, it’s like a mandate to mention the public folders. The public folders contain user data as well as information critical to the system. The system information is needed for the swift operation of Exchange Server in the environment. Replication of the public folders is done in order to have better performance and effective and easy management of application.

Two types of replication are there: hierarchy replication and content replication. In some cases, replication of the public folders between the Microsoft Exchange Servers becomes troublesome. Replication may cause some inconsistencies in the database and render it inaccessible. These inconsistencies may cause severe data loss and may lead to database corruption while replication of public folders. Thus, need may arise for Exchange Repair using tools.

Practically, when public folder replication request is sent by a system running Microsoft Exchange Server, email scanning might also occur. Messaging Database may also get corrupted at the same time and you may encounter the following error message displayed on your screen:

“Multiple edits have been made. The conflicting edits have been attached to the conflict message.”

At this time, the public folders of the server may get inconsistent and inaccessible. It may lead to critical data loss and database corruption. The job of Exchange Server Administrator is to find out the cause of the problem and go about solving it.

Root cause of the Problem:

There may be cases that a database transaction is written inappropriately and there is an error. This can lead to an imbalanced Exchanged Server transaction state. If virus scanning is enabled, then imbalanced transaction state may promote virus scanning to be done on outbound replication emails. Database may also get corrupted due to imbalanced state of database transaction.

Resolution of the Problem:

To resolve these problems, a hot fix is provided by Microsoft on its website and is downloadable from there. After the installation of the hot fix, database integrity should always be checked by Isinteg.exe utility. The hot fix can solve the problem and the problem will not occur in the future. As far as damaged database is concerned, hot fix can’t repair it. Exchange Recovery is required for repairing and restoring the corrupted database.

There is an affective and advanced third party application available to resolve the problem, called Exchange Database Repair tools. An extensive scanning of corrupted Exchange Server is carried out by this software. The software restores all of the server’s objects intact. The software is equipped with easy graphical user and interactive interface, thus there is no need for prior and sound technical skills and you can save yourself from database corruption while replication of public folders.

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Exchange 2010 Transport Protection Rules

February 1st, 2010 by admin No comments »

One of the most important improvements in Exchange 2010 in my opinion is the new toolkit that allows administrators to implement policies that works with Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web Access too. The fact is offers many different tools that make Email Hosting better and easier to manage.

This is a significant step forward, as previously OWA was something of a unsubtle beast. You could either restrict access to mailboxes altogether or it was open season on emails. Now policies can be enforced across the board, whatever client the users prefer.

The Transport Protection Rules enable Exchange administrators to create rules that control every aspect of email, from content restrictions, size, approved recipients for sensitive emails, no copy and pasting and other neat tricks. While most of these features have been around in other incarnations, they have never been so easy to implement or ever worked with Outlook Web Access. The TPR system is new to Exchange 2010 and a welcome addition to the platform.

In a real life example of the TPR in action, say a project manager send a detailed email to his team listing a new product, it’s benefits, features and proposed release date. He can mark he email confidential so his people knew not to share it, which has always been the case. The mail would have a flag on it marking it as confidential.

Now, with Transport Protection Rules, Exchange can enforce a policy on confidential emails that includes not being able to forward them, copy and paste to or from them and other niceties. This means if someone absent mindedly forwarded it as part of a conversation the Exchange server would refuse. This is a significant step forward in information security, and allows administrators to control the flow of information with much more granularity than before.

Drilling deeper into the Transport Protection Rules, it’s also possible to restrict emails, by email address, location, recipient, whether it’s internal or external and a raft of other criteria. It also works seamlessly with Outlook Web Access too. Which is handy because Office 2010 doesn’t even have a release date yet.

The biggest bonus with these rules, and the closer integration with OWA is that everything will work with browsers other than Internet Explorer. No more will you need plugins to be able to enforce rules, or add functionality. Everything works out of the box, so Opera, Firefox or Safari users will also have full access to the available features, and also be subject to the Transport Protection Rules.

The Exchange 2010 was the largest beta Microsoft have ever run. From where I’m sitting, it was worth every minute. They have listened to feedback and integrated many of the improvements into the new system. While it’s still a big, cumbersome beast, it’s now a bit more manageable at least.

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Data Leak Prevention

November 20th, 2009 by admin No comments »

A great deal of time and money is spent protecting organizations from electronic threats from the outside. Firewalls, anti-virus, DMZ’s and so on. Increasingly businesses are also having to turn their attention inwards and look at data leak prevention from the inside.

Despite the many safeguards in place, many organizations electronic communication and file systems are largely unmonitored. That means there is an ever-present threat of data loss either by accident or on purpose. Losing customer data as we often see in the media is an embarrassing and expensive thing. It can lead to loss of business, reputation and even large fines. Given the strict regulatory frameworks business works in, data loss prevention should be a top priority.

Data loss can be anything from employees knowingly sharing confidential data with competitors, accidentally sharing it, losing the information, or infrastructure failures that cause data loss. With all the avenues available for an organization to lose confidential or important data either on purpose or accident, it is as important as any other area of corporate security to address.

There are three areas of data leak prevention that needs addressing in any process.

  • Data in motion – Any information that is moving through the company network, including email, files transfers and the internet.
  • Data at rest – Information in the form of emails, files, databases and such that is static, or stored.
  • Data at the endpoint – Endpoints are client computers, work laptops, USB storage and other movable, mobile devices.

An effective data protection program will analyze each one of these and come up with a strategy to address them.

Just about everything the modern business does is electronic. Communication is mainly by email, files are stored electronically, and even phone calls are now going VoIP. The potential for loss is huge, and it should not be underestimated that the main cause of data leakage is through accident, not by design.

The main data leak prevention method is to take regular backups of all stored data. They can either be incremental during or at the end of the day, or complete backups at the end of the week. The same for email archiving, which is separate to backups. Email archives are necessary not only to protect against data loss but to ensure compliance.

Data in motion can be secured by having traffic monitors put on the business network that sniffs all traffic for potentially damaging information being communicated where it shouldn’t be. They can flag suspicious emails, file transfers and the like if they fit a particular criteria like file type or keyword.

Data at the endpoint can be secured by limiting the use of USB ports on client machines, and password protecting the necessary ones. While this isn’t a complete solution, it secures the information enough to prevent all but the most determined hacker.

Data loss prevention is an essential part of any operational strategy and should not be underestimated. It could cost a company a lot more than its reputation.

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The Hosted Model

September 21st, 2009 by admin No comments »

hostedexchangeMicrosoft Exchange Hosting is a messaging platform built by Microsoft to enable email communication across the globe. It allows organizations to provide email, calendars, contact lists and collaborative technologies to their users either on-site or remotely.

Exchange by itself doesn’t actually do much, it has to be hosted on an Exchange Server. To access it remotely, the system will also need routers, network infrastructure and firewalls as well as a team of people to manage and maintain the system. For Blackberry access a Blackberry Enterprise Server would also be required, adding to the overhead.

Not only is hosting Exchange and expensive thing to set up, it’s also expensive to run. The upfront costs will include new servers, licenses, and all the things mentioned above. Then the running costs of maintenance add up to a significant investment needed by any organization.

Small to medium businesses simply cannot afford these kinds of outgoings, certainly not in the early days. However email is now an invaluable business tool that is essential to effectively communicate internally and externally.

The answer is to let someone else host the system for you and access it remotely. This is called SaaS, or Software as a Service. A vendor or service provider will have an existing infrastructure which a business can rent ‘space’ on. The vendor will supply a web application to their customers who will in turn make it available to their users. The process is completely transparent, the user would have no idea that the application was being hosted remotely.

The popular way to pay for a service like this is by the seat, or user. This provides great flexibility in a changing environment, or the growing business, as the service can be scaled to the exact needs of the organization. This saves money on the upfront costs, and saves even more by not having to build an entire infrastructure for a few users. With the Hosted Exchange model you pay for what you need.

There is also the subject of compliance to consider. Every business in America is subject to stringent compliance laws which mean all email communication has to be stored securely for a number of years. That number depends on the business and the nature of the email but is roughly around five years.

These emails have to be stored securely too, as well as easily searchable, indexed and retrievable. This adds more overhead to anyone running any kind of email system, let alone an Exchange one.

The hosted model also includes compliance in most packages. This again, takes the burden off the small business. The vendor will already have the supporting infrastructure and the expertise to store, index and retrieve the emails when requested.

Microsoft Exchange hosting is an ideal way for a business to have all the benefits of an established IT infrastructure without having the burden of setting one up and running it themselves. It is becoming more and more popular as existing hosts refine the process and improve reliability, and newer operations are springing up to offer credible competition.

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Posted in Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Hosting

Benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server

September 21st, 2009 by admin No comments »

exchangeserver

Exchange Server is a software package designed to make email communication fast and effective with an organization.

Email is now so intrinsic to the way we do business that many, if not most companies couldn’t work effectively without it. The vast majority of business is now conducted via email, with businesses generating hundreds of millions of them a day. All these mails have to be created, sent, received and stored somewhere, which is Exchange’s strength.

Not only is Exchange one of the most efficient email platforms in the world, it is also the most user friendly, scalable and offers a host of other applications other than email, such as calendars, contact lists, and other collaborative tools. It makes working smoother, communication quicker, and time management much more efficient.

It also has an effective security backbone that adds an extra layer of protection against spam, interception of email and other malicious attacks. Emails can be encrypted to protect company secrets, accessed via HTTPS to protect them when they are sent or received, securely stored to protect them while the company remains in compliance, then securely deleted when their life comes to an end.

The security is comprehensive though. Threats to corporate security are many and varied, and Exchange only offers a modicum of protection. Further security will be needed for total protection on the email infrastructure, such as firewalls and anti-virus.

Organizations that use Microsoft Exchange have more freedom than ever before. With remote working becoming more common, the Outlook Web Access (OWA), the cell phone interaction, and even Blackberry interfacing all offers the ability to keep in touch wherever in the world someone may be. Most of the features are available remotely such as the collaborative tools like public folders or shared calendars, email and the contact list, so any employee can function fully when out of the office.

As the Exchange platforms have developed and evolved, they have become more and more efficient. The front-end is now familiar to most users, who can now navigate it easily. The back end is more efficient, and allows for much easier troubleshooting. A comprehensive built-in maintenance package allows for technicians to find and fix problems easier than ever before. The ability to cluster Exchange means they can be scaled easily, grown with the organization and keeps downtime to a minimum. All important considerations for any business.

The improved monitoring capabilities of the platform also allow for effective pre-empting of issues, allowing engineers to take action before the event. Comprehensive logging, fault reporting and trend analysis tools built into the platform also help troubleshooting. Servers don’t always warn you when they are going to fail, so it’s vital that accurate and timely logs are retained to effective root cause analysis can be carried out.

Microsoft Exchange is one of many messaging platforms available on the market today. It is however the most comprehensive, and popular one. More emails are sent throughout the world to and from Exchange than any other platform.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Server

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Migrating to Microsoft Exchange

September 21st, 2009 by admin No comments »

microsoftexchange

Before Microsoft Exchange became the powerhouse of communication it is today, businesses had to rely on a range of disparate systems to perform functions across the organization.

These systems didn’t always like to play nicely together or even work in the same, or a similar way. This prevented effective integration of the different features available with each product. So email would work on one system while contact lists would be managed by another, and calendaring by something else entirely.

While this gave users all of the applications they needed to communicate, they wouldn’t work together, and never offered a complete solution. When Exchange came along it was the first time users had a truly integrated system where everything was run from the same place and would work together in one seamless system.

Calendars would work with email, and contact lists could be created and used by all users directly with email. Later innovations to Exchange included voicemail, fax from desktop and other integrated tools. Third party software was also created to offer further functionality to the system, which increased usability and productivity.

While these features add a lot to the usability of a system, they also add a significant overhead to any IT budget. As good as Exchange is, one thing it isn’t, is cheap. Not only do businesses need servers to host the software on, they also need a network infrastructure and maintenance techs to keep things running.

This up front, and ongoing financial commitment is what put many businesses off using Exchange. The cost involved far outweighed the benefits for any but the largest companies, or those who could pool their resources.

Fortunately, these services are available to anyone, whatever the size of their business thanks to hosting vendors. These vendors offer an outsourced version of Exchange which provides all the benefits of the system without any of the negatives. While this may seem too good to be true, it is true.

Businesses wanting to make use of this service will pay the vendor on a per-seat basis for each user. This way there are no upfront costs, maintenance costs or anything like that. All the hardware maintenance, licensing, upgrades, network and the million other things involved in running an IT department are handled by them.

Exchange has a host of data migration tools which can make migrating from a different system much easier. The vendor should be well versed in taking care of migrating data and will have a toolset designed specifically for this task.

This means data can be copied from a non-Exchange system and migrated into Exchange, then Exchange can be brought online once the configuration is complete. This means no loss of continuity as users will have all their data and emails, and there will be no time without a system as downtime will be minimal.

Migrating to a hosted Exchange service has never been easier. It is now within reach of any business who can enjoy the benefits of the system with none of the downsides.

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Features and Benefits of Microsoft Exchange

September 21st, 2009 by admin 9 comments »

microsoft-exchange

Microsoft Exchange was designed from the outset to be easy to maintain and manage throughout its operating lifetime. It delivers much improved communication capabilities to users while offering decent protection against outside attack.

One of the main benefits is remote access. Users no longer have to be in the office to access all the features of the system. They can be anywhere in the world with either an internet connection or a cell phone. All a users emails, calendars and contact lists can be made available no matter where they are.

Exchange, and it’s client, Outlook are now familiar throughout the world. The easy to learn, and use interface offers a single place to perform many forms of communication such as email, instant messaging, voicemail, fax and document storage. Text-to-speech features in later editions even added the option to have voicemail converted to text to read later.

Added compliance features help significantly in every organizations legal obligations to store and index email and electronic communications. It offers a secure storage facility where emails can be quickly archived, and retrieved as the various laws dictate. Exchange can also integrate with external storage mediums if space becomes an issue.

Built in spam protection features protects the infrastructure and the users from malicious or junk emails. Users won’t have to waste work time sorting through spam, or worry about viruses as the security system will check the emails before they are even delivered. Sophisticated filtering software keeps out the vast majority of junk mail without anyone even having to interact with it.

Some of the features of Exchange are;

Outlook auto-discover. This applet saves the time of the administrator by automatically configuring an account by searching for the email address input by a user and allowing access to the system. Account administration used to be one of the most time consuming jobs of any system technician.

The built-in search facility enables users to search emails and documents for a given term. This is a powerful tool, which can save a lot of time and effort when trying to retrieve an old mail or old information.

Outlook Web Access is also one of the major features of Exchange. It allows users to access their email and other tools from anywhere in the world.

Integrated encryption is also a feature of the platform. Emails can be sent and received securely using certificates. This protects the contents from malicious hackers or corporate raiders trying to gather information on an organization.

Document viewing tools enables users to view documents in all different formats directly from Outlook, even if the specific format reader isn’t installed on their machine. For example a user can read a PDF through Outlook without having Adobe Reader installed.

These few are just an overview of the features and benefits of using Microsoft Exchange. The full list would fill volumes, and would bore you long before you reached halfway. I hope these few are enough to pique enough interest to investigate further.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Microsoft Exchange, get it hosted

September 21st, 2009 by admin No comments »

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As a small business owner, I have to consider all the elements that will make it an effective, viable venture. That includes everything from the coffee maker to the lighting, internet access to cell phones.

One of the biggest choices I had was whether to invest in an IT infrastructure to support me or not. I didn’t really want to borrow more money to build a whole network or server farm, then have to learn how to maintain or pay or employ someone to do it for me.

Communication is vital in any business, especially so in mine as it’s based around soft skills. I considered Microsoft Exchange as a communication portal, but reading up about it began to put me off.

Servers are expensive. They are expensive to buy, to configure and maintain. Not only that, but the software is also expensive, licensing is a bane I wanted nothing to do with, but knew I would probably have to if I wanted to be a success.

To make an Exchange system work, I needed an Exchange server, and two active directory servers, a network with a router and firewall, decent anti-virus and a host of other expenses. For the purchase costs and licenses I was looking at almost $10,000, and that didn’t even include training or running costs.

I knew I could afford that, certainly not in the beginning, so I continued my research. A few days later I happened across an advert promoting hosted services. I had no idea what that meant, but I’m the curious type so I explored further.

It was here that I was introduced to hosted services. These are where a large vendor like Archive Compliance builds an infrastructure that can support thousands of users. They then break it up into bite-sized chunks for new or small businesses just like mine and ‘rented’ it out. This was just what I had been looking for!

I contacted them to learn more and found that they allocated mailboxes and everything you would expect from your own Exchange server, but you didn’t have to host it. It was accessed by a web application and the users would never know the difference. All I had to pay for was a monthly fee for each user who I wanted to access the system.

Well this was ideal, I paid for what I needed and no more. I had no startup costs, didn’t need training or extra staff and could have the full functionality of the Exchange system without any of the hassle or responsibility. The enterprise level systems they run had much more fault tolerance than I could ever have afforded as well as better network protection.

The clincher for me though was that they took care of all my compliance obligations. They would store and archive my mails and electronic documents and would retrieve them for me if I received an e-discovery request for any reason.

Starting in business is expensive, but thinking through or around problems is the way to ensure they are kept to a minimum. I was able to save thousands of dollars by having my email hosted and haven’t looked back since.

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