Hello Friends… as we work on AD, exchange, sharepoint  and take backup of the database on regular basis have you ever thought when they get a common platform how to take backup of it then.

Now here we have Office Communication Server which provide that platform to our applications.

So how do we backup Office Communication Server where we have Unified components such as CWA, COMO, Edge, Mediation Server etc. …… think.

Fine.. I will explain you how we can take back up of OCS server.

As OCS becomes a critical service for organizations especially for IM, Voice, Video and Conferencing it’s important to have a backup strategy and a well tested recovery plan.

Firstly we should have knowledge on Business Requirements of our organisation like,

• Business continuity (how many business driven applications do rely on OCS?, how important is Voice over IP? How users are connected to applications like exchange, sharepoint, etc.
• Data completeness (OCS will store User Data, Compliance related data and configuration data. How frequent would like to backup this?)
• Data criticality (How do you deal with compliance related data? How long do you need to store this?)
• Cost constraints (How many time will you lose when having a Disaster Recovery? How many does that cost?

we should be aware of it before we design the OCS backup and restore plan.

Secondly, what needs to be backed up?

When looking at OCS you see that OCS stores different information and configuration on different levels within the architecture. When looking closer you see three different levels.

• Global Level Settings ( It applies to all computers in the forest)

• Pool Level Settings (In which configuration settings apply to an individual Standard Edition Server or Enterprise Edition Servers within the same enterprise-pool).

• Computer Level Settings (machine level settings which are specific to that OCS running machine)

Which tools do I required to create a backup?

* LCSCmd.exe, used to export settings to the backup location (and to import them, in the event that they must be restored). This tool is available on any computer on which you have installed the Office Communications Server 2007 administrative tools. When having a Standard Edition Server lcscmd is already present.

* Database tool: To backup databases on Standard Edition servers and, to restore the database on any Standard Edition (in the event of loss of data), use SQL Server Management Studio Express in SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

* File system tool to backup system state and file shares. (NTBackup.exe)

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How to backup my global and pool configuration on OCS standard Edition Server ?

At the command prompt, change to the directory containing the LCSCmd.exe tool (by default, <drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007).

Backup machine level

lcscmd /config /action:export /level:machine /configfile:<drive>:\<path>\<filename>.xml /poolname [name of Standard Edition server, which is used for the pool name]

At the command prompt, change to the directory containing the LCSCmd.exe tool (by default, <drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007).

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007>lcscmd
/config /action:export /level:machine /configfile:D:\e-office\21052008\canada1_2.xml /poolname:canada1

After doing the first two steps repeat this for canada2, canada3 and canada4. The last one canada5 is special you can easily export the CWA configuration file to a XML-format. Execute the Export Wizard and follow the steps.

Hello Friends,

Check out this new Connectivity Analyzer tool for OCS

There are 2 types of test we can do in our environment
1) Office Communication Server Remote Connectivity Test
This test will test your remote connectivity to the OCS Server.

2) Office Communication Server Remote Connectivity Test with AutoDiscover
This test will test your remote connectivity to the OCS Server, it will auto-discover the Access Edge and port to connect to.

For further information, please click on the Image above.

Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 Trial Software

The Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 Trial Software is now available for download. Download the free trial and check it out in your lab today.

Download: OCS 2007 R2 Download Link

List of OCS 2007 R2 Documentation Links

Here is my big list of Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 Documentation Downloadable Links. The following are OCS documents available for download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Office Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 Getting Started Guide

Communications Server 2007 R2 Documentation

Planning Tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Deployment Guide

Integrating Telephone with Office Communications Server 2007 and 2007 R2

Communications Server 2007 R2 Quick Reference for Communications Server 2007 R2 Attendant

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Dial-in Conferencing E-mail Templates

Microsoft Office Live Meeting Quick Reference for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Getting Started with Office Communicator Web Access 2007 R2

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition User’s Guide

Proof of Concept for Unified Communications – Datasheet

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Attendant Deployment Guide

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit Tools

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Client Group Policy Documentation

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Release Notes

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition User’s Guide

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition Deployment Guide

Office Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 FAQ

Office Communicator Mobile Quick Reference Card

Office Communicator Attendant Quick Reference Card

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Attendant Deployment Guide

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Quick Reference Card for Contact Management, Presence, and IM

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Getting Started Guide

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Quick Reference Card for Phone and Video

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Testing and Troubleshooting Guide

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Quick Reference Card for Conferencing

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Quick Reference Card for Keyboard Shortcuts

Office Communicator Web Access 2007 R2 Quick Reference Card

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Quick Reference for Dial-in Conferencing

Getting Started with Microsoft Office Live Meeting Client for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Meeting Client for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Testing and Troubleshooting Guide

Office Live Meeting Quick Reference for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Deploying the Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 Client with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat What’s New Guide

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Quick Reference Card

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Getting Started Guide

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Planning and Deployment Guide

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Client Group Policy Settings

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Testing and Troubleshooting Guide

All about Office Communication Server 2007

I was searching alot to get some good documents to learn more on Office Communication Server 2007
Finally I am adding all the information i collected from different websites and writing this post to help others so that they can make use of the information and can save lot of time….

Microsoft Certifications
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Exam 70-638 – TS: Configuring Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-638.mspx
NB: this document is party in error – there is classroom training to support the exam. See Below.

Microsoft Press And Other Books
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Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/10482.aspx)
This is a must have book for OCS fans everywhere!

You can download three chapters of this book

(Chapter 3 – Infrastructure and Security Considerations;
Chapter 4 – Basic IM and Presence Scenario;
Chapter 9 – Remote Call Control Scenario).
See: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=407A3E40-350A-4E3D-B60E-C9505668B231&displaylang=en

NB: this is probably overkill if you just want to learn the basics and pass the test. But it’s a great resource if you really want to learn more about the product.

E-learning course(s)

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Microsoft Learning has produced e-learning covering OCS. It’s about on par with most of MSL based e-learning. The e-learning content is purchased as a “bundle”, 5125, that consists of 4 separate e-learning titles. The actual e-learning titles in the 5125 collection are:

• Clinic 5126: Introducing Enterprise Instant Messaging Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (Beta)
• Clinic 5127: Introducing On-Premise Conferencing Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
• Clinic 5128: Introducing Enterprise Telephony Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
• Clinic 5129: Customizing Real-Time Communication with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

To get the full 5125 set, go to: https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=111910

Instructor Lead courses
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Microsoft Official Curriculum courses are as follows:

• 5177 – Implementing and Maintaining Instant Messaging Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. (1 day – level 200)
• 5178 – Implementing and Maintaining Audio/Video Conferencing and Web Conferencing Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. (2 days- level 200)
• 5179 – Implementing and Maintaining Telephony Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. (2 days – level 200)

These classes were designed to be totally independent of each other. While they can be taken together, there is overlap. If you take them together, enquire if the CPLS will cater for this facet.

TechNet Article
——————————————————————————————————————————–

Connecting Users with Office Communications Server 2007 – this article presents an overview to OCS 2007.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/09/OCS/default.aspx

Webcasts
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Microsoft has produced many Web casts! First some intro ones:

• TechNet Webcast: Understanding Office Communications Server 2007 Architecture (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Enabling External User Access in Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Overview of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Implementing Instant Messaging/Presence and Conferencing in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Understanding Call Routing in Office Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Migrating from Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Office Communicator 2007 Customization and Extensibility (Level 200)
• TechNet Webcast: Compliance and Archival Capabilities in Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)

And for some greater depth:

• TechNet Webcast: Configuring Office Communications Server 2007 with DNS, Certificates, and Load Balancers (Level 300)
• TechNet Webcast: Managing and Automating Communications Server 2007 (Level 300)
• TechNet Webcast: Mediation Server and PSTN Gateways in Communications Server 2007 (Level 300)
• TechNet Webcast: Nortel CS 1000 IP PBX Integration with Communications Server 2007 (Level 300)

Exam Prep Guide
——————————————————————————————————————————–

The Preparation Guide for the Exams is at:http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-638.mspx

Blogs

Blogs are a useful place to find out more information about OCS. Some useful blogs you might visit, in no particular order:

• OCS Team Blog: http://communicatorteam.com/default.aspx
• Communicator Team Blog: http://communicationsserverteam.com/default.aspx
• MSGoodies – OCS related posts
• UK UC User Group: http://mucuguk.org/blogs/default.aspx
• Mark Deakin’s Blog (Mark is OCS PM in the UK): http://blogs.technet.com/markdea/default.aspx
• Joachim Farla’s blog: http://unified-communications.blogspot.com
• Brian Spurlock’s blog (Brian is an MCS OCS superstar) – http://blogs.msdn.com/byrons/default.aspx
• Jens Trier Rasmussen – http://blogs.technet.com/jenstr/default.aspx

These blogs contain a huge number of useful posts. Consider using an RSS reader to read these blogs.
As an alternative, I’ve created an aggregation blog online at http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=5591.

OCS Documentation
——————————————————————————————————————————–

The best documentation on OCS (and related components) is contained in the huge document library on the TechNet web site.
For the full set of documents and up to date links see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb676082.aspx.
Key documents useful for learning OCS include:

• Office Communications Server 2007 Planning Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition Deployment Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition Deployment Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Archiving and CDR Deployment Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Edge Server Deployment Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Voice Planning and Deployment Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Security Guide
• Office Communications Server 2007 Technical Reference

Virtual Labs
——————————————————————————————————————————–
Take a virtual lab and play with OCS. You can sign up for free to play with OCS 2007.:

• Deploying and Configuring Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
• Enabling Users and Installing Office Communicator 2007
• Configuring and Using Conferencing in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
• Using the Management and Troubleshooting Tools in Office Communications Server 2007
• Configuring the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging Server Virtual Lab
• Compliance and Archiving in Office Communications Server 2007

OCS Community
——————————————————————————————————————————–
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/OCS2007/

Other Web Sites
——————————————————————————————————————————–
Microsoft UC Tech Center: http://www.microsoft.com/uc/tech.mspx
OCS Learning Portal: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/ocs2007/default.mspx

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Please do provide me with your comments… to improve my blog.

I believe many of you must have thought of trying your hands at the “High Availability” feature of Windows OS – Clustering. Building a usual plain windows cluster could be easily achieved using any virtualization tool like MS Virtual PC or VMware Workstation. But the fact here is “does it actually work the same way as we expect or otherwise have we really been successful to mimic the actual feature of Windows Clustering as in a live environment”?

To answer the above question, let’s take a small scenario of building a 2 node server cluster and having a “shared physical disk” as one of the resources hosted on the cluster.

Now to give a brief overview about the working of a “shared physical disk” in the live environment, we all know that if Node1 is in control of the disk, then Node2 would not be able to access it and vice versa. But the most important thing here is the integrity of the data that’s been written on the disk i.e. if Node1 writes some bytes on the disk the same should be visible to Node2 when it gains control over it.

In a live environment using SAN and SCSI hardware the above scenario could be easily achieved. But when it comes to virtual environment (or rather a test lab on our home PCs) it doesn’t come up easily unless until either using 3rd party software or the tweak explained in this article.

Note:  This article henceforth would be referring to VMware Workstation as the virtualization tool since MS Virtual PC doesn’t support a 2 node cluster with a “shared” quorum feature. Also this article assumes that the reader has the basic understanding and awareness about Windows clustering.

So let’s consider the below setup:
* DC1 – Domain Controller/DNS
* Node1 – Member Server/Cluster node 1 having its own virtual HDD
* Node2 – Member Server/Cluster node 2 having its own virtual HDD
* HDD1 – A separate virtual HDD added to either of the nodes (Node1 for example in this case)

The above mentioned HDD1 would be first added as a part of the Node1 server. Then the same HDD would be added to the 2nd node, Node2 server. Now there is the catch, at a single point in time, only one server can claim hold of the additional hardware HDD1 in VMware. So when you power up Node1 and then try to power up Node2 (to which you have added the same additional HDD) it would throw an error. So to resolve this conflict you would need to add a code of line in the VMware configuration file (.vmx file) of both the servers.

disk.locking = “FALSE”

This would allow both the nodes to simultaneously access the HDD. But still the integrity and persistence of the data written by both the nodes wouldn’t yet be retained. That is, if Node1 writes anything on the disk it wouldn’t be visible to Node2 and vice-versa. Therefore to ensure that both the nodes see a common data we need to add another line of  code in the configuration file of both the nodes.

diskLib.dataCacheMaxSize = “0”
diskLib.dataCacheMaxReadAh

eadSize = “0”
diskLib.dataCacheMinReadAheadSize = “0”
diskLib.dataCachePageSize = “4096”
diskLib.maxunsyncedWrites = “0”The above code would retain the integrity of the disk and it would behave just as any usual “shared physical disk” resource as in a live environment.

Apart from the above, you would be following the standard process of adding the disk and making it recognized using Windows “Disk Management Tool” and building the cluster and finally adding the physical disk as a resource in the cluster group.

Happy Clustering……………………..

As we can see that OCS 2007 R2 is the most common topic in microsoft forum nower days, thought of writing this article to give you a brief idea on Office Communication Server.

Let me start up with a question …… What is OCS ?

The answer is simple, “OCS” stands for “Office Communications Server.” It’s the abbreviated name for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The current version is OCS 2007 R2 (stands for “Revision 2,” naturally). OCS 2007 is the centerpiece of Microsoft’s unified communications strategy to bring together e-mail, instant messaging, presence, voice and video on to a single platform.

It is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based server that routes and switches IP-based voice traffic, as well as instant messaging and Web conferencing sessions.

OCS is available in 2 editions :
1> OCS 2007 Standard Edition
Function :  IM/Presence, Conferencing, Voice
Purpose : All in one functionality for simple Deployment
Size : For Organisations with less or around 5000 users depend on load
We dont have High Availabilty

2> OCS 2007 Enterprise Edition
Function :  IM/Presence, Conferencing, Voice
Purpose : Higly avilable and scalable and suitable for big enterprise deployment.
Size : For Organisations with 125,000 users
High Availabilty :  Yes using Load Balancers and Multiple Servers in a Pool.

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Previous Versions
* 2009 – Office Communications Server 2007 R2
* 2007 – Office Communications Server 2007
* 2006 – Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1
* 2005 – Live Communications Server 2005, codenamed Vienna
* 2003 – Live Communications Server 2003

Possible Future Versions
* 2010 – Office Communications Server 2010 also named Wave 14

OCS 2007 Standard Edition

– Ideal for Branch Office or New Pilot Office
– It only require a single Server to manage all the funtionality of Instant Messaging, Presence, Peer-to-peerVoice, Conferencing.
– It is ideal solution for 5000 Users or less.
– Bundled up with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express SP2 (SP3)

OCS 2007 Enterprise Edition
– Command line Only setup.
Client Access Licensing  :
A CAL is required for each user or device (depending on the license) accessing the server. Either version of the CAL may be run against either version of the server.

The following usage scenarios for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will require that CAL licenses be in place for each user or device:
• For Office Communications Server 2007 R2 voice extensions
• For internal users organizing or attending a Web conference
• For IM identities hosted on the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Server

The following usage scenarios for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will NOT require that CAL licenses be in place for each user or device:
• For users receiving a call from an extension hosted on the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Server
• For Non Office Communications Server 2007 R2 users placing a call to an extension hosted on the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Server
• For public network or federated users with an Office Communications Server 2007 R2 user
• For external users attending a Web conference

Microsoft Pricing for OCS 2007 R2

Software Requirements

1. Operating System  – X64 Only
2. Windows Server 2003 X64 SP2
3. Windows Server 2008 X64
4. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2 or SP3 and SQL Server 2008
5. Active Directory Forest/Domain Level
   • Windows Server 2003 and windows server 2008 suppored.
   • – Exchange Unified Messaging : E2k7 SP1 or Exchange server 2010.

Hardware Requirement (Enterprise Edition)

1. Frontend Server

• x64 Dual Quad Core CPU, or 4 Way Dual Core CPU
• 8 GB Memory
• 10K rpm Disk Drives

2. Backend SQL Server

• x64 Dual Quad Core CPU, or 4 Way Dual Core CPU
• 16 GB Memory10K or 15k rpm Disk Drives (multiple Spindles)

3. Other Servers

• Use Frontend or Backend specification as appropriate

Difference between Ocs 2007 and OCS 2007 R2

• x64 bit Capable hardware required.
• x64 bit Operating System required.
• Migration Options
  – Side by side migration
  – Export data – New Install option

• Existing expanded topology deployment may want to migrate to consolidate topology
• Exchange 2007 SP1 required for Exchange Unified Messaging
• Deployments on Windows 2000 AD forest/domain to move to Windows 2003 minimum level.

I found in Exchange 2007 public folder is the most De-emphasized topic as in favour of more powerful tool called Sharepoint in collabration with Exchange to provide more power. To Understand Public Folder, PF is a folder created to share information with others. Public folders in microsoft Outlook can contain contacts, calendar items, messages, or Forms.

We can configure Public folder in 2 ways.
1> Were we have Exchange 2k7 SP1 installed we can go to ESM > Tools > Public Folder Management Console, and configure it.
2> If we dont have SP1 installed then we have to go from ESM > Mailbox > New Storage Group , and configure it.

———————————————–

Now that something interesting about PF in Exchange 2007.

To launch the management tool, simply double-click on it or select Launch Public Folder Management Console in the Action pane.

Note if your organization relies heavily on public folders and public folder management is performed on a daily basis, you might want to create a custom MMC console to which you add the Public Folder Management snap-in, so that you can open the console without first opening the EMC > Toolbox and finally the Public Folder Management Console.
To create a custom Public Folder Management console, click Start > Run and type MMC and then press Enter.
In the empty MMC console, click File > Add/Remove Snap-in > Add then drill down to the Public Folder Management Console snap-in and click the Add button, click OK and then save the MMC.

Managing Public Folders using the Public Folder Management Console

When we connnect to the Public Folder Management Console, we have to select the server to connect from
” Connect to Server”.
Now we should see Public Folders as well as System Public Folder in the server tree. from the public folder tree itself we can create, delete or modify a public folder and we can also mail email it from the console itself.

Public Folder Replication
We can add the replication partner to the Public folder by clicking in “Properties > Replication tab” and after that we can also set the nearest PF replica to access to the client using “Public Folder Referral”.
we can set the Cost to “1”.

For further details on Public Folders in Exchange 2007 please send your queries.

Few points I wanted to share on Exchange 2007 setup:

01. Exchange 2007 Server Role requirements:

Mailbox server:

— Internet Information Services (IIS)
— COM+ access (IIS 6.0 component)
— World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC)
— Hotfix that is described in Knowledge Base article 904639 & 918980

Client Access server:

— World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC)
— Remote procedure call (RPC) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Proxy Windows networking component
— ASP.NET version 2.0
— Distributed Transaction Coordinator service

Edge Transport server:

— Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)
— Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
— Configure DNS suffix

02. Exchange 2007 setup options:

— setup /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions or setup /pl. You must be a member of the Enterprise Admins group to run this step. This will grant specific Exchange permissions in each domain in which you have run Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2000 DomainPrep.
— setup /PrepareSchema or setup /ps. This command connects to the schema master and imports LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) files to update the schema with Exchange 2007 specific attributes.
— Run setup /PrepareDomain or setup /pd to prepare the local domain.
— Run setup /PrepareDomain: to prepare a specific domain.
— Run setup /PrepareAllDomains or setup /pad to prepare all domains in your organization.
— To install Exchange 2007 SP1 in unattended mode:

Setup.com [/mode:] [/roles:]

Modes: Install; Uninstall; RecoverServer

For example: Setup.com /mode:install /role:Mailbox,HubTransport /TargetDir:”C:\Exchange 2007″
— Setup.com /mode:Upgrade
This command upgrades an Exchange 2007 server to Exchange 2007 SP1.

03. Exchange 2007 Setup by default creates the setup progress file in C:\ExchangeSetupLogs. The log file is ExchangeSetup.log. This log file can be used for troubleshooting if setup fails and can also be referred for setup process followed.

04. The following are the Microsoft Exchange security groups that get created with Exchaneg 2007 installation:

1. Exchange Organization Administrators
2. Exchange Recipient Administrators
3. Exchange Servers
4. Exchange View-Only Administrators
5. ExchangeLegacyInterop
6. Exchange Public Folder Administrators (with E2k7 SP1 installation only)

05. You can remove a particular Exchange 2007 server role from the server either using Add/Remove Programs or using Powershell. Using Control Panel- Add/Remove Programs, when you select to remove a particular server role, the “Exchange Maintenance Mode” wizard starts.
Using Powershell, follow the below syntax:
Setup.com /mode:uninstall /role:

Eg: Setup.com /mode:uninstall /role:ht,ca

You cannot add the Edge Transport server role to a computer that has any of the other server roles installed.

Here comes Next Version of Exchange Named Exchange 2010……

Recently Microsoft launched the public beta for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (previously code-named Exchange 14).

The release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 includes significant changes in the Information Store, a new approach to high availability through database replication, management and administration updates, and new features for messaging compliance. Building on improvements in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, the Exchange 2010 Information Store uses a larger page size and will compress attachments among other performance enhancements.

As we all know that Microsoft Launched Exchange 2007 which had code name as “Exchange 12”, This time microsoft during the lauch of new Exchange Server Launch skipped the “Exchange 13” and given code name as “Exchange 14” may be due to superstition.

It basically follow up the same architectural changes made in Exchange2k7 with some better updates for better performance and enhancements of store (Specially Increased page size from 8kb 32 kb).

High Availability at the Core
Exchange 2007 introduced log shipping to let administrators replicate data to local disks (local continuous replication—LCR), to another node in a cluster (cluster continuous replication—CCR), and to a server in another data center (standby continuous replication—SCR).

Exchange’s high availability feature set through four key steps:

* The concept of storage groups is eliminated, so the database becomes the management unit to plan high availability around—this is a sensible step given that log replication works only for a storage group containing a single database.
* Single copy clusters are eliminated and not supported in Exchange 2010.
* LCR is also removed from Exchange 2010 because log replication on the same server delivers limited value.
* A new component in Exchange 2010 called the RPC Client Access Layer upgrades the Client Access server role so that all client connections flow through a predictable point in the network.

* In Exchange 2010, the Client Access role determines which server currently hosts the live copy of a mailbox by reference to the DAG information, which is held in Active Directory (AD), and is therefore able to redirect clients when a database has been switched.

The Future for Exchange Clients
It’s long been standard practice for Microsoft to release a new version of Outlook alongside a new version of Exchange. Exchange 2010 is part of the Office 14 wave, so Microsoft has upgraded Outlook, Outlook Web Access, and Pocket Outlook (on Windows Mobile 7.0 clients) to add new features, improve usability, and accommodate the architectural changes in Exchange 2010, including some performance improvements within Outlook to deal with the demands of very large (>2GB) mailboxes. After all, there’s no point in Exchange being able to support very large mailboxes if its premier client finds it difficult to process those mailboxes, which is often the situation today.

The biggest thing you’ll notice in the client UI is a focus on conversation views where you’ll be able to process complete sets of messages that make up a conversation more efficiently than you can today. MailTips, small balloon-like messages, will appear to warn users whenever an action might not make sense. For example, you’re about to use Reply to All on a message that includes 3,000 recipients. OWA is still very much supported in Exchange 2010.

New features Preview of SharePoint 2010

Though the features and look and feel of the new product is farely good, I will not be surprised to find double the bugs in that product as SharePoint 2007.

Upgrade and Central Administration is quiet a relief to look at but then again it depends on how smoothly it works on large enterprises where already a lot of customization is done.

* Groove (the offline/online synchronization tool Microsoft bought when it acquired Groove Networks) is being renamed and repositioned with the upcoming release as “SharePoint Workspace Manager.” Update on May 13: Microsoft has confirmed officially the renaming and is saying that SharePoint Workspace Manager and OneNote will be part of the Office 2010 ProPlus SKU. (Microsoft is declining to provide any other information, at this point, on its planned Office 2010 line-up.)

* SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only and require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 to run. It also will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.

* SharePoint Server 2010 won’t support Internet Explorer 6. From the SharePoint Team blog: SharePoint 2010 will be “targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems. In addition we’re planning on an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows Operating Systems,” according to the SharePoint Team Blog.

* SharePoint 2010 will feature a “Web-enabled Ribbon control” and support greater use of Silverlight controls

* CMIS support will allow interoperability between SharePoint 2010 and other content management systems

* The architecture supposedly won’t change as it did between SharePoint Server 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, thus insuring less compatibility issues and a smoother upgrade path (at least in theory)

* There’s a new feature, known as “faceted search” coming in the 2010 SharePoint release. No details available yet.

* A new version of FAST Search for SharePoint will be made available at a lower cost. Meanwhile, according to contractor and SharePoint blogger Lars Fastrup (whose blog entry is the source of a lot of this post), “the SharePoint team have scrapped their efforts to make the SharePoint search engine scale beyond 50 million documents in a single index. The argument will be to move to the FAST search engine instead.”

Microsoft has still not released anything on SharePoint 2010 Basic installation or upgradation path from that type of installation. Will have to wait and watch……