Kiran's Blog

Mid-April Microsoft released the public beta for Exchange 2010.Though Exchange 2010 is not a major shift in technology compared to Exchange 2007 there are some significant improvements.

Below are some of the features to look forward to in Exchange 2010 though this list is not inclusive

1.Dude,where are my storage groups? And what’s this “Database Availability Group” (DAG):

In Exchange 2010 “Database Availability Group” provides a single high availability solution which can handle on-site as well as off-site replication (features which were first introduced in Exchange 2007).With DAG an Exchange database is no longer associated with a server but instead is an Org level resource.Each database can have upto 16 copies.

• No more storage groups.
• Exchange 2007 SP1 features,Local continuous replication (LCR) & Single copy cluster (SCC) are no longer available.
• No longer needed to specify if clustered or non-clustered server for Mailbox server role installation.
• Other Exchange 2010 roles such as Hub Transport or Client Access server can be installed on Mailbox servers which are member of a DAG

Check out a great description of DAG here

2.New Outlook Web Access features :

Some of the OWA 2010 features are as below.

• OWA support for browsers Firefox & Safari,so no more OWA light
• Conversation View for emails – Grouping/ungrouping mails from a single conversation togather
• Side by side view for Calendars
• Integration with Office Communicator, including presence, chat, and a contact list

Check out detailed discussion on Exchange 2010 OWA features on Paul Robichaux’s blog

3.Improved administration with Exchange Management Shell

As a lot of you would know ,Microsoft has already started community technology preview of Powershell 2.0 (currently CTP 3 is in progress).Hence Powershell 2.0 based Exchange management shell offers following advantages.

• With the new Exchange Management Shell,one can connect to remote Exchange 2010 servers across the network with only Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3 and Windows Remote Management 2.0 CTP installed.
• Enhanced audit logging possible using shell.  Any modifications done in Exchange organization configuration or any other exchange objects using either ESM,web management interface or shell will be logged & can be tracked.Check out the detailed information here

4.Mail tips :

Mail tips is  really a cool feature.Mail tips are nothing but informative messages regarding the mail & its recipients.The mail tips could be regarding over sized messages,invalid recipients,restricted recipients etc.

Detailed examples of mail tips are discussed at MSExchange team blog.

For detailed information about all of the new features in Exchange 2010 check out the technet article here