As you are surely aware, the year 2011 ended on a high note with the release of Exchange Server 2010 SP2. This update includes support for service providers using the on-premises configuration from SP2 onwards in their hosted environment.
Along with this service pack, Microsoft released the document “Multi-Tenancy and Hosting Guidance, Exchange Server 2010 SP2”. This document highlights the considerations that must be addressed in multi-tenant hosting environments. Service Providers that want to deploy Exchange Server 2010 SP2 in a multi-tenant configuration should ensure that they have addressed these considerations through either an in-house approach, or through a third-party solution.
For those not interested in developing your own in-house solutions, Ricketts Corporation has developed a transport agent to address the transport-related considerations.
Their solution enables you to use either recipient\sender domain name matching or Active Directory lookups to correctly deliver external OOF messages between tenants hosted on the same platform. Without the agent, Exchange 2010 SP2 Enterprise treats mailboxes in different tenants that are hosted on the same Exchange platform as internal. This can produce a data leakage issue as internal OOF messages will be delivered between tenants even though the user would expect that Exchange would deliver the external OOF. This solution enables the Hub Transport server to determine whether or not the recipient is within the same Exchange tenant and then deliver the correct OOF message.
Additionally, by inspecting message header information generated by an external SMTP gateway, it can establish whether messages processed by the Hub Transport server have been generated by local senders for local recipients. If a configured X-Header is not present it will override the next hop and route messages out of the Exchange platform to an external SMTP gateway such as an Ironport, Barracuda, Edge Server, cloud based AV/AS gateway, etc. When the message re-enters the Exchange platform, the X-Header is present and the message is delivered as normal. This enables the solution to:
Please feel free to contact Ricketts Corporation directly for more information: info@rickettscorp.com.
Microsoft recently released a security update to protect customers against the industry-wide issue described in Security Advisory 2659883. The security update resolves a publicly disclosed, remote unauthenticated Denial of Service issue in ASP.NET versions 1.1 and above, on all supported versions of the .NET Framework.
Microsoft is currently unaware of any attacks targeting ASP.NET, but we encourage customers to test and deploy the update as soon as possible. Consumers are not vulnerable unless they are running a Web server from their computer.
For Additional Information & Updates, please visit:
I pride myself in building great teams. A core component isthat I only hire people that are either smarter, more knowledgeable or moreskilled than I am in a particular area. It can lead to heated debates but it alwaysleads to a better outcome. That is the approach we took with Parallels PleskPanel for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2.
Our latest release, Plesk 10.4 (http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/)now available, includes support for Microsoft’s WebMatrix and Web Deploy. Webdevelopers can use WebMatrix or Visual Studio to develop full featured web applicationslocally on their machines, and then use Web Deploy to upload them toPlesk. We created a powerful control panelfor Microsoft Windows that provides more features and greater functionality.
It is a complete Web hosting panel that includes integrateddesign tools, a SaaS marketplace, and fully automated billing and provisioning.
Yet there is more. With the release of Plesk 10.4 comes arefreshed Plesk Panel PowerPack which includes support for MS Microsoft SQL Server databases.
Thank you, Microsoft for working with us on this release.
Post by:
John Zanni
Vice President, Service ProviderMarketing and Alliances at Parallels
Last night, senior leaders and influencers across the telecom industry gathered at the Hudson Terrace in New York City for Light Reading’s annual Leading Lights Awards. The awards program focuses on next-generation communications technology, applications, and services, and rewards the companies that have performed well over the past year. The panel of judges included Light Reading editors and Heavy Reading and Pyramid Research analysts.
Microsoft was awarded Best New Service or Application (Telecom) for the June 2011 launch of Office 365 with telecom operators. Office 365 is Microsoft’s next-generation productivity suite, available through more than 20 operators and hosters on four continents in June this year.
This award category focused on the company that has deployed a potentially market-leading, revenue-generating service or application that enhances the use of next-generation communications technology in the wireline network. Microsoft met the judges’ criteria for the way in which the company brought its flagship cloud service to market with operators around the world using the syndication model (whereby service provider partners can sell, bill, and support Office 365, bundled with their existing services and targeted at small and medium-sized businesses).
In September, Microsoft was named a finalist in this category alongside Orange Business Services, Apple Inc., KT Corp., XConnect, Sidera Networks Inc. and CENX Inc.
Congratulations to the entire team involved in securing this prestigious award and a special thanks to all our operator partners who made this kind of industry recognition possible!
Attend a FREE three-day bootcamp for SPLA partners on high availability & disaster recovery (US ONLY)
Join Microsoft and partners by registering today to attend a 3-day boot camp in Chicago, Atlanta, or Redmond (Dallas, Boston & Silicon Valley currently being scheduled), and learn about techniques and best practices for designing high availability and disaster recovery for mission critical systems. HA/DR is an essential requirement faced by companies. Cloud service providers should incorporate these solutions to their offerings to support these needs in today’s market. The 3-day bootcamp will cover capabilities, configuration, and management of using Microsoft Windows, Microsoft System Center, and Microsoft SQL Server to support these scenarios. The bootcamp is at no-charge to SPLA partners.
Who should attend:This course is intended for technology professionals with a working knowledge of Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server administration. Familiarity with general high availability concepts, networking, Windows Failover Clustering would be beneficial.
Location
Dates
Invitation Key
Register
Chicago, IL
November 15th-17th
834561
Register Here
Atlanta, GA
December 6th- 8th
D01173
Redmond, WA
December 13th–15th
ED7A09
What is the News?
On October 13th, Microsoft announced that the /hosting mode option for deploying Exchange for multi-tenant hosting will not be carried forward into the next version of Exchange. Going forward (starting with Exchange 2010 SP2), hosters should use the on-premises configuration of Exchange to run a multi-tenant hosted Exchange infrastructure which will be fully supported by Microsoft and offers a broader set of features to be offered to end customers.
Hosters who have deployed Exchange 2010 SP1 /hosting have the following options:
Microsoft is also actively engaging with several hosting automation software vendors and SIs to ensure there are solutions in market for the on-premises configuration of Exchange Server 2010 SP2.
We want to hear your feedback on this announcement. Please send any questions or comments to: h o s t i n g b l o g [at] m i c r o s o f t [dot] com
Q: Why is Microsoft making this change?
A: We believe, after considering feedback from partners, this is the best, most flexible course of action available to support our hosting partners. This will ensure that hosters are able to offer a broader set of the features available in Exchange, and bring their solutions to market sooner.
Q: What are the hoster benefits of deploying an on-premises configuration of Exchange?
A: Our research tells us that customers are upgrading to Exchange 2010 to access advanced feature like Exchange Unified Messaging. Switching to the on-premises configuration of Exchange will allow hosters to offer many of these advanced features available in Microsoft Exchange in a fully supported model.
Q: Will Microsoft continue to offer bug and security fixes for Exchange 2010 /hosting mode?
A: Yes, Microsoft will continue to offer bug and security fixes for Exchange 2010 /hosting mode as per our standard product support lifecycle. Microsoft will not add new features to the /hosting mode of Exchange.
Q: Will Microsoft add any new features or capabilities to Exchange 2010 /hosting mode?
A: Microsoft will not be adding any new features or capabilities to Exchange 2010 /hosting mode. Microsoft will, however, continue to release bug and security fixes through the standard product support lifecycle.
Q: What new features in Exchange 2010 SP2 make it possible to host the on-premises configuration of Exchange 2010?
A: The key new feature which hosters will take advantage of is known as Address Book Policies (ABP). ABP allows for easy segmentation of the global address list, and will be the prescribed method for achieving this when running a multi-tenant hosting infrastructure. It is important to note that ABPs do not address all the configuration elements required for multi-tenancy; additional configuration guidance will be published by Microsoft later this year.
Q: How do I go about building a multi-tenant environment using Exchange 2010 SP2 on-premises configuration, and what will I have to do to make sure I still get support from Microsoft?
A: Later this year, we will publish hosting guidelines that will outline the challenges hosters will need to address when hosting a multi-tenant infrastructure using the on-premises version of Exchange 2010 SP2. The document will recommend the approach you should use to solve these challenges but will not provide step by step guidance on how to do it. This framework will also help you ensure you solution will be supported by Microsoft.
Q: Will HMC support be extended considering that the recommendation is to use Exchange 2010 SP2 which won’t be available until later this year?
A: HMC 3.5 support ended July 12, 2011. Microsoft will support HMC 4.x through December 12, 2011 as planned. The good news is that the upgrade from Exchange 2007 with HMC to Exchange 2010 SP2 using the on-premises configuration will be significantly more streamlined than an upgrade to Exchange 2010 using /hosting mode.