Summary
Exchange 2010, the first major release since Exchange 2007 shipped in 2006 and the seventh major release since Exchange debuted in 1996, offers improved high-availability capabilities, new archiving and compliance solutions, support for new client-side features, and increased performance. The improvements could help you and your organizations cut deployment and maintenance costs by using less expensive hardware while reducing downtime and dependency on third-party solutions to supplement Exchange deployments. The new client features enabled by Exchange 2010, such as conversation thread tools and voice-mail text preview, could save end users time and increase their productivity. However, organizations should review the new licensing terms for possible cost increases.
Exchange 2010 offers improved high-availability capabilities, new archiving and compliance solutions, support for new client-side features, and increased performance. The improvements could help organizations cut deployment and maintenance costs by using less expensive hardware while reducing downtime and dependency on third-party solutions to supplement Exchange deployments. The new client features enabled by Exchange 2010, such as conversation thread tools and voice-mail text preview, could save end users time and increase their productivity.
This blog article outlines new and changed features in Exchange Server 2010 and the benefits and pitfalls of upgrading to help you and your organizations decide whether or not to deploy the product. Part 1 will focus on high availability features of Exchange Server 2010.
Exchange Server 2010 offers redesigned high-availability features aimed at keeping Exchange servers running and available for client access. The new high-availability features replace nearly all of those introduced in Exchange 2007 and simplify administration, support more configurations, and reduce hardware requirements. The improvements could help your organizations that use Exchange cut costs and increase uptime, but the new technologies require IT training, procedural changes, and a full migration to Exchange 2010.
The high-availability improvements may entice organizations to upgrade from Exchange 2003 (a large proportion of current deployments), which had fewer high-availability options. Moving to Exchange 2010 from Exchange 2007 could free up hardware no longer required for some deployments, although the cost and effort to tear down a complex Exchange 2007 high-availability deployment to reconfigure it for Exchange 2010 could cause some organizations to postpone an upgrade.
Organizations currently using Exchange will not get the full value of the new high-availability features until all of their Exchange servers are upgraded to the new version. Consequently, organizations in the course of a migration cannot count on the Exchange 2010 mechanisms for high-availability of servers that are not upgraded. For example, during migration, Exchange 2007 servers must continue to use the older high-availability technologies, while at least two servers must be upgraded to Exchange 2010 to provide redundancy using the new features. Exchange 2007 (SP2) and Exchange 2010 Transport servers can interoperate to transfer mail within the organization during the phased migration. (Note that Exchange 2010 supports coexistence with Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007, but not with Exchange 2000 and earlier versions.)
The additional high-availability support in Exchange 2010 will create overlap with some third-party solutions that complement earlier versions of Exchange. However, Exchange 2010 exposes a hook for third parties to override its out-of-the-box replication processes with other solutions that could, for example, ease recovery after a failure.