Introducing Exchange 2016!

risual | 15th October 2015 | Exchange

New toys!!

Exchange 2016 is now officially released to the public and with it comes a plethora of new technologies, features and services. Over the coming months I plan to post a small series of blogs that will introduce Exchange 2016 and go through the new features, the discounted features as well as looking at the planning of Exchange 2016 and installing an Exchange 2016 environment in a test lab.

Hopefully I can answer some questions you may have around Exchange 2016 or at least introduce the latest and greatest from Microsoft.

New and improved Features

As with any new version of Exchange Server, there are new features that come with it, otherwise….what’s the point? Depending on what version of Exchange you currently run, depends on what features are ‘new’. I’ve listed the new features per version below and will go in to more detail on them in later posts.

New and improved features from Exchange 2013 include:

  • Exchange roles – Exchange 2016 now only has the Mailbox and Edge Transport roles.
  • Outlook on the web – Formally known as Outlook Web App (OWA) this isn’t really a new ‘feature’ in itself but does have some new features within the client.
  • MAPI over HTTP – Made available with Exchange 2013 SP1, this is now the default client access method for Outlook in a fresh Exchange 2016 deployment.
  • Document collaboration – Outlook on the web users can link and share documents stored in OneDrive for Business in an on-premises SharePoint server instead of including the document as an attachment.
  • Office 365 hybrid – Once again not really a new ‘feature’ but the hybrid connectivity wizard receives some improvements.
  • Data Loss Prevention – Introduced in Exchange 2013 DLP policies get some improvements. Over 80 types of sensitive information can be identified and protected.
  • In-place Archiving, retention and eDiscovery – Improvements have been made to the message compliance features of Exchange 2016.
  • Performance and scalability – Improvements have been made to the search functionality within Exchange 2016 and the number of mailboxes you can view in the EAC has been increased to 10k and PowerShell now returns an unlimited number of mailboxes!

New and improved features from Exchange 2010 include the above and:

  • Exchange Admin Centre – Exchange 2013 introduced the EAC as the single management console for Exchange.
  • Managed Store – In Exchange 2016 the Managed Store is the name of the Information Store processes, Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Service.exe and Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Worker.exe. The new Managed Store provides better availability through improved resiliency.
  • Certificate Management – Certificate management was improved in Exchange 2013 with the introduction of the EAC and improvements were focused around reducing the number of certificates administrators needed to manage.
  • Setup – Improved readiness checks and a new modern wizard make the setup of Exchange easier than ever.
  • Transport Rules – Transport rules have been improved in Exchange 2016 including new conditions and actions.
  • Microsoft Rights Management connector – An optional RMS connector is available to enhance data protection by connecting to cloud-based Microsoft Rights Management service.
  • In-Place Hold – A new feature introduced in Exchange 2013 that will allow you to retain email in a mailbox based on queries defined.
  • In-Place eDiscovery – Another new feature introduced in Exchange 2013 that allows administrators, or other users with the correct privileges, to search and discover mail in user’s mailboxes.
  • Auditing – Improvements have been made to auditing reports and administrator audit log.
  • Anti-malware Protection – Another feature introduced in Exchange 2013, built in anti-malware filtering helps protect your network from malicious software transferred in email.
  • Mail Flow –Changed to the transport pipeline, routing and connectors improve mail flow in Exchange 2016.
  • Group Naming Policies – Group Naming Policies enable administrators to standardize distribution group names created by users.
  • Message Tracking – Administrators can now track delivery information in the EAC.
  • Public Folders – The public folder architecture has been redesigned with public folder databases removed and public folder mailboxes taking their place.
  • Shared Mailboxes – Shared Mailboxes are now easily managed via the EAC.
  • Integration – Exchange 2016 has greater integration with Skype for Business 2015 and SharePoint 2016.
  • Offline Outlook on the web – Certain browsers now offer an offline (cached) version of Outlook on the web.
  • Batch mailbox moves – Improvements have been made to the way administrators can move mailboxes.
  • High Availability and Resilience – DAGs and mailbox database copies have been greatly improved and offer better high availability and resilience.
  • Exchange Workload Management – The monitoring of the health of system resources and user throttling has been expanded in Exchange 2016.

The above list of features and improvements was taken from TechNet but I plan on going through each of the new features to Exchange 2016 from Exchange 2013 in more detail and hopefully showing you them in lab environment in future posts.

Discontinued and De-Emphasized Features

Exchange 2016 also has some discontinued and de-emphasized features as well. Once again this differs from Exchange 2103, to 2010:

Discontinued and de-emphasized features from Exchange 2013:

  • Client Access Role – The client access role is no longer used in Exchange 2016. All client access services are now provided by the mailbox role.
  • RPC over HTTP – Outlook Anywhere is no longer the preferred client connection method for Exchange, with MAPI over HTTP taking the reign.

Discontinued and de-emphasized features from Exchange 2010:

  • Hub Transport / UM Role – The hub transport and unified messaging roles have been integrated in to the mailbox role.
  • Exchange Management Console – The EMC is no longer used for administration of Exchange. The Exchange Control Panel has also been replaced by the EAC.
  • Outlook 2003 – Outlook 2003 is not supported in Exchange 2016.
  • RPC/TCP – In Exchange 2016 Outlook clients have to use Outlook Anywhere or MAPI over HTTP to connect to a user mailbox.
  • Linked Connectors – The ability to link send connectors to receive connectors has been removed.
  • Anti-spam Management – Anti-spam features can now only be managed through the Shell.
  • Connection Filtering Agent – When the anti-spam agents are enabled on a mailbox server in Exchange 2013 the connection filter agent (and the attachment filter agent) aren’t available.
  • Managed Folders – Managed folder are no longer supported in Exchange 2016. Retention Policies must be used for MRM.
  • Directory Lookups using ASR – In Exchange 2010 user could use automatic speech recognition to search users listed in the directory. Users cannot do this in Exchange 2016.

 

Hopefully this will help give a quick overview of the changes that Exchange 2016 brings with it. Over the coming months I will look to dive in to the new features from Exchange 2013 in detail in a lab environment to provide some insight.

Thanks,

Matt

 

Part 2 of Introducing Exchange 2016 looks at the Requirements and Pre Requisites. Check it out – http://risu.al/Ex16-02

Part 3 of Introducing Exchange 2016 goes through the GUI and Command Line install of Exchange 2016. Find it here – http://risu.al/Ex16-03

 

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risual