There are many reasons why an organization would make the move to Exchange Server 2010. Features like email archiving, increased discovery capabilities, greater flexibility and the lure of anywhere access make this email solution a promising one.

However, these features are generally ones that are used to sell management on an upgrade or switch. For administrators, the PowerShell is usually a feature that gets them on board. Continue reading PowerShell Basics in Microsoft Exchange 2010

With another round of issues facing users of Microsoft’s Exchange Online service the launch of the Business Professional Online Services replacement, Office 365, is starting to face questions by consumers who are starting to think that Microsoft’s cloud based services may not have much of a silver lining.

Exchange Online is a hosted messaging solution, like Google’s Gmail for businesses, and is based on the same technologies that run the ever popular Exchange server. However as this is a hosted solution, the business does not need to dedicate the same resources towards messaging as they would if they were running their own email servers on-site. Since messages are stored in the cloud, Exchange Online users have “From virtually-anywhere” access to e-mail. Also touted by Microsoft’s website is:

• Improved email security
• Enhanced operations efficiency for a company’s IT staff
• 25-gigabyte mailbox storage size for the standard license

Most importantly, users who have become reliant on Microsoft Outlook and its tools can find the move to hosted email seamless unlike the issues that arise when using Outlook with other hosted email services.

Continue reading Is Microsoft Exchange Online Only Half-Baked?

Exchange administrators are probably quite familiar with management pressure or subtle ‘suggestions’ to migrate for a cloud-based email service, typically epitomized in the form of Google Apps.  As someone who believes in utilizing the best tool for the job, I am of the opinion that there are businesses and organizations that will certainly benefit from shifting to a cloud-hosted email service.  However, some companies might be opting for Google Apps due to what they hear about its supposed reliability and affordability, but neglecting to perform a factual evaluation.

While some might argue that a comparison of Microsoft Exchange with Google Apps is like trying to compare apples to oranges, there are fundamental similarities in an email service that we can use as a benchmark.

Continue reading Comparing Microsoft Exchange with Google Apps for Email

On 15th April, Microsoft announced the availability of Exchange 2010, the successor to Exchange Server 2007. According to Microsoft:

Exchange 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products and is the first server in a new generation of Microsoft server technology built from the ground up to work on-premises and as an online service. This release of Exchange 2010 introduces a new integrated e-mail archive and features to help reduce costs and improve the user experience.

What’s new in Exchange 2010? Here’s some details: Continue reading The Public Beta of Exchange 2010 is Available

The benefits associated with archiving Microsoft Exchange email and associated data, creates many cost effective solutions. Archiving facilitates government regulatory or civil litigation searches for ediscovery requests. It also allows for more complete archive journaling, and provides storage benefits for both mailbox growth and the various storage devices that can be utilized.

Although lowering storage reduction costs is a common denominator for email archiving, compliance requirements are moving more companies to implementing archiving strategies. Depending on the motivation factors, cost savings on storage are subject to interpretation by different people.  For some people, compressing email could reduce licensing, as well as storage hardware costs.  For others it may mean creating a mailbox for end users, which has virtually unlimited space.

Continue reading Archive Stubbing Techniques Not Recommended

“The more the better,” is a common mantra when it comes RAM but, in the case of Exchange Server 2007, that’s certainly not the case (OK, so it isn’t really the case in relation to other operating systems either, but that’s for another story).

With Exchange Server, Microsoft recommend no more than 32 GB of RAM. That’s because a) more than 32 GB will not substantially improve performance (and so you’d be wasting your money) and b) it may actually negatively impact performance. Here’s why (from Microsoft):

Cold state is defined as the state of the Mailbox server immediately following a server reboot or store.exe process restart. The Database Cache, which is used to cache database read/write operations, is small in size (or “cold”) during this period so it has a significantly diminished ability to reduce read I/O operations. As the Mailbox server processes messages, the Database Cache Size grows which increases the effectiveness of the cache and subsequently reduces the I/O footprint of the server. The larger the physical memory size of the server the longer it takes the Database Cache size to reach its optimal size. If the storage is designed/sized for a server with a large amount of physical RAM (>32GB), and the I/O profile of the users assumes an optimal Database cache state (large/warm cache); then the client experience may be compromised due to insufficient disk performance during these “cold state” periods.

Continue reading How Much Memory is Too Much?