Exchange Server 2019 Public Preview!

Microsoft have just announced Exchange Server 2019! Some of the key features include:

Security – Microsoft have included support for installing Exchange Server2019 onto Windows Core. Exchange server 2019 installed on Windows Server 2019 Core provides the most secure platform. There is also choices to install it onto Windows Server 2016 Core or Windows Server 2016/2019 with Desktop Experience.

Performance – Microsoft have worked on this a lot to allow Exchange Server to take advantage of larger core and memory systems and have said Exchange Server 2019 can handle up to 48 cores and 256GB of RAM. Microsoft have redesigned their Bing technology to allow better and faster results which in turn makes database failovers quicker with the administration aspect easier too. The search indexes are now within the database(s) themselves. Because of this there are no more separate log files to manage. As the index data is now within the database, normal log shipping includes the database and search data in a single replication and the index will always be up to date on all database copies.

another new feature is that Microsoft will use SSD’s with Exchange Server 2019, this is in addition to running cheap low cost spinning disks. Microsoft have realised they cannot go on without using SSD’s due to disk read latency where as customer storage keeps growing. The SSD’s will be used to search for key search data, to make logins faster and make message retrieval faster. This tiered storage with read/write capability to Exchange Sever 2019 however will not be enabled in the Preview build.

End user experience – Microsoft have said one of the most important capabilities in Exchange is calendaring. Some of the key features that Microsoft are bringing in include, do Not Forward and Simplified Calendar Sharing from Office 365 to On-Prem Exchange. One more thing to note is that the Unified Messaging role will not be available in Exchange Server 2019. Customers who currently connect via a 3rd party PBX or Skype for Business Server to Exchange Server wont be able to do so in Exchange Server 2019.

 

To download Exchange Server 2019 click here.

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