August, 2010

Lots of improvements around archiving and discovery, faster OWA, upgraded mobility, and several management tool improvements. Can’t wait to install on my servers.Exchange Server 2010 SP1 is now available for customer download here.  Link to info on Exchange team blog here.

“Frontend” (FE) Spec

•CPU 8 cores (Dual Quad-Core) 2.00 GHz+

•12 gigabytes (GB) RAM

•Attached storage (hard disk drive 10,000 rpm+, 72GB+)

•Applicable to other roles (Edge, Monitoring/Archiving)

•2 network interface cards (NICs) 1 GB per second (GBps)+

“Backend” (BE) Spec

•Central processing unit (CPU) 8 cores (Dual Quad-Core) 2.00 gigahertz (GHz)+

•32 GB RAM

•Attached storage (10Krpm+, 70GB+), multiple spindles

•2 NICs 1 GBps+

•Server Virtualization support

•Including Audio/Video/AppSharing roles

•Details temporary database (TDB)

* Baseline for 100,000 user pool with 10 FEs and 1 BE

What are the OSes CS14 will run on?

Microsoft Communications Server “14”

•Windows Server 2008 SP2 x64

•Windows Server 2008 R2 x64

•PowerShell V2

Admin Tools, and Core

•Win 7 (x64 only)

Vista SP2 (x64 only)

•PowerShell V2

Which version of SQL Server® Backend

•SQL 2005 (SP3) x64

•SQL 2008 (SP1) x64

Which AD Forest/Domain level is required?

•Windows Server 2003

•Windows Server 2008

•Windows Server 2008 R2

What pre-requisites do I need installed?

•PowerShell V2 RTM

•Not supported are PowerShell V1 and PowerShell V2 community technology preview 3 (CTP3)

•Internet Information Services (IIS) rewrite module 2.0 (redist)

•Selected IIS modules

•.NET 3.5 (SP1)

•VC++ (redist)

•MSMQ

•Active Directory® Domain Services (AD DS) (optional for AD Prep)

•SQL 2005 BC (for Install-CsDatabase)

I get asked this quite a quite a bit and I couldn’t find a consistent answer. My colleague, Steve Scholz, provided me this useful feature matrix as when to use UAG for publishing Exchange 2010 and when to use TMG:

To summarize, either UAG or TMG will provide reverse proxy publishing for Exchange 2010.  The only differences are specific features are lit up with TMG and UAG.  For example, if you need client cert based auth go with TMG but if you are worried about OWA leaving residue on public machines you will have to go with UAG.

Both UAG and TMG leverage the same protocols, same certificates, and similar publishing approaches.

Here is a whitepaper explaining UAG vs. TMG options with further details:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=894bab3e-c910-4c97-ab22-59e91421e022&displaylang=en