With every new release of Microsoft Exchange Server, you're probably familiar with all the hoopla and hullabaloo that comes out of Microsoft, telling how it's the greatest thing ever and how your messaging system—and by extension, your company—can't survive in the business world without it. But of course, you know that's not the case. Furthermore, as you investigate that new release—say, Exchange Server 2010, for example—you've probably uncovered some unanswered questions, things that don't make sense in your environment, things that make you hesitate before recommending an upheaval in your current systems, which after all are getting along just fine.
Recently I had the chance to speak with Astrid McClean, senior technical product manager on the Exchange team at Microsoft. I asked her some of the questions that I've been hearing from readers, and her answers get well beyond the hoopla. Do they clear up every hesitation for you? Dive into the interview to discover that for yourself. And if you still have questions, send me a message to let me know what they are.
Q: What is the recommended upgrade path from Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007? And why is there no in-place upgrade option? That's a point readers have commented on that they're sort of frustrated about.
McClean: Yes, I understand that. One of the major reasons that we don't have in-place upgrade in this version is that we've actually significantly changed the mailbox database schema. It's something we don't talk about a lot, but a lot of the I/O improvements we got were from changing that database schema. And that basically means that you need to do a move mailbox to get mailboxes between versions. So that's one of the reasons that we don't have an in-place upgrade.
We know that we still do have a lot of customers running Exchange 2003, and a lot of those customers will be at a point where they need to replace their server hardware. So while they can't do an in-place upgrade, we really try to make it as easy as possible to streamline the deployment experience. And I don't know if you've seen our Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant—we released that recently to give people some streamlined steps so that they can choose where they're upgrading from, whether it's 2003 or 2007, and you just answer a few simple questions about what features you're using, and it gives you some step-by-step instructions about how to actually do the deployment.
Q: Right, I think I saw that announced on the Exchange Team Blog.
McClean: Yes, we've kind of got a discussion of it there. And that's really designed to make sure that the deployment is as easy as possible for IT pros. So not only does it give them step-by-step instructions, it gives them the ability to have a look at those before they have to do the deployment to see what's involved. And that's really based on the experience that we've had with our early adopters as well as with our own internal deployment, so it's really got all the best practices about how to do it well and how to make it really successful.
Q: Does the assistant cover how to migrate to the cloud or to a hybrid cloud/on-premises Exchange set up? I know that's an option Microsoft has been talking about a lot with this release.
McClean: No, not at this time. Right now, the only Exchange 2010 cloud solution we're running is actually for our Live@edu program, which is for our education customers. So for the general, more commercial customers, we'll be looking at upgrading our Exchange Online to Exchange 2010 later on next year. Once that's in place, that's certainly an option for people as well.
Q: How does Exchange 2010’s built-in archiving compare to third-party archiving solutions? What was your intent for adding this feature?
McClean: The initial intent for adding that feature was really to provide our Exchange customers with a way to get all of the data from their PST files—which cause a range of headaches—back under the control of Exchange. So from a user-experience point of view, they have this one place where they can get their data. It's a familiar user experience. And from the administration side of things, they've got one set of tools that can manage their data. We know that around 80 percent of our Exchange customers don't have any archiving solution at all—their solution is typically PST files. So really, the personal archive is a way to get that data into Exchange and get it into a managed environment.
So in terms of, I guess, comparison with other archiving products, there's probably a lot of things that we don't do the same way. The personal archive in Exchange 2010 might not be suitable for companies that have really complex compliance scenarios or regulations, but for a lot of companies out there that are using PSTs, it's an ideal way to get that data back under the control of Exchange.
Q: What feedback have you heard from early adopters and your Technology Adoption Program (TAP) members about this feature?
McClean: We've had a number or our early adopters that have looked at the archiving feature and said, "This is exactly what I need." Because they want a way to get that data back in Exchange, and they want it to be as easy as possible for their users to access. I guess time will tell whether we get a large number of people that take up that option, but this is the first time that we're introducing it. And we've actually had a lot of feedback about how easy it is to use and how easy it is to manage.
Q: Do you have any sense yet of how you plan to use or develop this feature in future versions of Exchange?
McClean: It is hard to tell what it is that we're going to do, but it's certainly something that is part of our mailbox strategy, and we'll be listening to customer feedback to see what it is that customers are needing from Exchange. And if they need more functionality in that area and they're looking for it, then that's certainly an area we'll look to develop.
Q: One of the most exciting new features in Exchange 2010 is the Database Availability Group (DAG) as a means of high availability. What do Exchange administrators who have become adept at managing Exchange clustering with previous versions need to know to quickly leverage DAGs?
McClean: This is really an evolution of the continuous replication that we introduced in Exchange 2007. So we had CCR and SCR [cluster continuous replication and standby continuous replication]. So for those that are familiar with that way of keeping a database copy updated using log shipping, a lot of those same principles still apply. But one of the big differences now is that everything happens at a database level. The other thing we've done is we're now combining the onsite and offsite replication into a single solution. It scales up to 16 servers and that means you can configure up to 16 copies of each database. And because that failover is at the database level, it means the failover time is really reduced down to 30 seconds or less.
So the concepts people will be somewhat familiar with if they understand Exchange 2007, but from a deployment point of view, we've made it a lot easier. We’ve got this incremental deployment model now, which is quite different from what we had in previous versions of Exchange. Instead of having to first create a cluster and do all that work, now the administrator just needs to set up the Exchange mailbox database. They can then create their Database Availability Group, add servers to it, and create copies of the database when they need it. And all of that administration is done through the Exchange management tools.
We've really tried to make it as easy as possible for the administrators. The customers that we've spoken to about DAGs, as soon as they see it or they read about it, they get really excited because they say, "Hey, this is something I can do, this is something that's easy to do, and this is something that I can add as I need it into my environment." It's not something that they have to plan fully ahead of time. And in addition to that, especially for smaller customers or for customers that have smaller locations, you can have all of the Exchange roles now on the servers that are made highly available, so you can have this highly available Exchange system in just two servers. And also, the high availability is now in the Standard edition of Exchange, whereas previously it was in the Enterprise edition. We think that will be a good bonus for smaller customers as well.
Q: Yes, the ability to do incremental deployment seems like a huge selling point. What are you hearing from people about that point?
McClean: Absolutely. People are thrilled with that. In the past, if they had a mailbox server and they suddenly decided they needed to cluster it, they've had to break down the server, move all the mailboxes off, create the cluster. So the idea that Exchange can do all that work for you, and already move the server to a Database Availability Group, and it'll manage the cluster in the background, is certainly something that our customers are very exciting about because it just makes the whole process so much easier.