Posts Tagged ‘Exchange 2010’

Exchange 2010 Features and benefits

March 16th, 2010

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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Exchange 2010 Transport Protection Rules

February 1st, 2010

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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Posted in Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Features and Benefits of Microsoft Exchange

September 21st, 2009

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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

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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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Posted in Microsoft Exchange Hosting

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Setting up Outlook to Connect to Exchange

September 16th, 2009

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Exchange servers are used by companies all over the world to pass messages both internally and externally. Email is now the primary method of communication in business. We send hundreds of millions of emails every day, and the vast majority of them are sent and received by Microsoft Exchange Server.

Exchange is a platform that sits on a server and co-ordinates email clients throughout an organization. It accepts emails from users, translates them into binary, packages them up and sends them to the recipient. The receiving Exchange server will unwrap the email, build it again and forward it on to the recipient. As well as email, there are also calendar and contact functions as well as Outlook web access and mobile features that allow email to be sent to laptops, cell phones and PDA’s.

Users new to Exchange may find themselves in a position of trying to configure Outlook to connect to the server. In most organizations, this will be done for you, but there are some that will leave it up to you to figure out.

That’s where we come in, this article will describe how to connect your client to an Exchange server in no time at all so you can get on with emailing in the shortest time. The process is pretty straightforward, as Outlook is often installed by default on any machine with Office. If your machine doesn’t have Office either, Outlook Express may be there.

So, click Start then Control Panel then Mail. See? Easy so far. Select Email Accounts and then Add New Email Account and then Next. Choose the Microsoft Exchange Server then hit Next.

Here you have some options for which you need information. You will need the address of the Exchange server. If this hasn’t been provided for you, ask a colleague and copy their settings. Depending on how things are set up this may be enough to get you going.

You need to input the Exchange Server address, this is often something like “mail.company.com”, but can in fact be anything. You will also need to input your username and password, which the administrator will need to provide you. It may be different than your system login, but give it a try if you don’t have the details.

Once you have input the information, the application should do a quick check to ensure the details are correct then return it’s version of your email address. Once this happens click Finish.

Outlook should now chug away a bit and start downloading your emails and email settings. It will also install any corporate signatures, calendar events, contact books and rules. Depending on the organization, this could take a little while, but can be done in the background.

That is all there is to it. IT support may make a big deal out of setting you up with the connection, but once your account has been created in Exchange, the rest is easy.

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Posted in Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Exchange 2003 The Top Five Mistakes in Configuration

September 16th, 2009

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Microsoft Exchange 2003 was the most deployed messaging system worldwide. There are literally billions of emails that travel through Exchange servers each week, and hundreds of thousands of Exchange servers to do the processing.

When building or deploying Exchange 2003 there are five easy mistakes to make when configuring the system. As an ex-IT engineer, I can describe them here, and tell you where you went wrong. While this list is by no means exhaustive, these are the most “popular” mistakes I have seen in my ten year career.

The first is not forwarding Port 25. In larger organizations this means talking to a network team. This port must be forwarded, or an alternative port allocated and configured for mail use. Firewalls and any DMZ routers must be configured to forward all port 25 traffic to the Exchange cluster in order for mail to work. If another port is specified it should only be internally as external messaging servers will send mail to the default port.

The second error is Improper reverse DNS. Reverse DNS is a useful anti-spam tool that is enabled by default on Exchange. Each message server of any type needs to be able to identify itself to other Exchange servers in order to reduce spam. If this is improperly configured, outgoing mail may be refused as junk and deleted. Both the forward DNS and reverse DNS should ideally resolve to the same address.

The third error is connection filtering that isn’t set up. Server 2003 and upwards has a connection filtering feature which is like a spam block list. It holds a list of “blacklisted” spam IP addresses which it compares the incoming email against. If this isn’t configured properly then one defense against spam is wasted. In the battle against junk mail, you need to use every weapon in the arsenal to protect your messaging network.

Fourth is incorrect MX records. MX records are held by a web host and specifies the DNS record of the server which accepts incoming email. If this has been configured with an IP instead of a hostname, or points to the wrong host, then email isn’t going to get through. This record needs to be the gateway mail server that sits on the edge of the network.

Last, but certainly not least is not having deleted item recovery set up. Deleted item recovery is an exchange tool that allows users to try an recover items they deleted. This saves time by letting the user do it themselves instead of calling on an administrator to recover it from storage. With a large user base, this is essential if you want to keep support costs down.

While these aren’t the only errors made when configuring an Exchange server or cluster, they are by far the most common. Fortunately they are also the easiest to remedy if you have administrator access to the system, and network, or know someone who does.

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

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The Benefits of Hosted Exchange Services

September 16th, 2009

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Companies are slowly gravitating towards hosted services to maintain business critical applications. Large numbers of organizations have moved to web or application hosting providers in order to lower the cost of ownership of these enterprise scale products.

The benefits of using a hosted service as opposed to managing it all are many.

The biggest advantage is that of cost. The upfront cost of building an enterprise level Exchange system is considerable. The server and network infrastructure is large and complicated and can need a lot of managing. Once the system is running, it has to be managed and maintained. That means a technician or engineer to keep things running. Depending on the size of the infrastructure it may need a team of them.

Having the system hosted means someone else has to worry about scaling, updates, repairs, licensing, upgrades, anti-virus, firewalls and upgrades. There is a lot of work involved in maintaining an IT infrastructure, most small to medium businesses are much better off outsourcing it to a competent vendor.

Exchange is the most popular corporate messaging system because it offers pretty much everything a company needs to keep in touch. It is a stable messaging platform that offers email, text messaging, fax from desktop, web mail in later editions and many more benefits to users.

To the company, it offers stability, centralized storage, scalability, reasonable security and manageability. It has decent anti-virus and anti-spam mechanisms, the Intelligent Message Filtering has become quite effective at filtering out most junk mail from users Inboxes. Not only does it reduce the overhead on the Exchange servers, it also reduces the time users waste sorting through them.

Security has been tightened in recent editions of Exchange. Each mail that now passes through can be encrypted, to prevent prying eyes discovering company secrets. The introduction of OWA, or Outlook Web Access was a significant step forward for Exchange. It meant that users didn’t have to be in the office to access their email. This gave much greater flexibility to a workforce and allowed staff on the road to keep in touch, wherever they were.

Later editions of Exchange also offer mobile integration, and will interface with Blackberry servers in order to fire email to handheld devices. This furthers the always connected ethos of the modern business. Now there is no excuse to not receive emails and be contactable. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Free time might be a thing of the past if this kind of technology keeps progressing.

Having Exchange hosted means there will be backups of everything and clustered servers to prevent downtime. The lower cost of ownership is a definite bonus to small and medium business. While someone else manages the system they can concentrate on other things. Exchange as a service can grow with them, as users can be added and paid for on a per seat basis.

Managing this infrastructure and everything that comes with it becomes someone else’s headache!

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

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