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Finally the wait is over! Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2010 is released!

You can download the bits here and you should read the release note before you go ahead and install.

Please note that you can install SP1 directly, no need to install RTM and then the Service Pack.

All new features and improvements are listed in this article and below you find a summary of my top five.

• Continuous replication – block mode
• Enhanced datacenter activation coordination mode support
• Reset Client Access Virtual Directory
• Importing and exporting .pst files (does no longer require Outlook)
• Distribution group naming policies
• And of course OWA Themes (had to throw them in so I guess that makes it top six…)

Happy patching!

This article has been on my “must read list” for a while but there has been a lot of other things going on lately… On a flight from a customer I finally got (took) the time to read it and I would like to share it with you. I’m talking about Scott Schnolls article New High Availability Features in Exchange 2010 SP1.

Today I spotted a good overview of the new features of SP1 Beta over at Michel de Rooij blog!

And don’t forget to read the rest of Michel’s blog there are some really good stuff and it look’s really good to don’t you think? ;-)

I get A LOT of questions about hosting on Exchange 2010…

Along with the release of SP1 Beta Microsoft also released a help file for hosting.

Download it here

There are a lot of new features in Exchange 2010 SP1 and now you can see for your self!

Download the bits here

As this is a beta I point out the obvious, it’s not for production…

I was just about to finish a blog post about allow/block/quarantine mobile devices in Exchange 2010. Since SP1 for Exchange 2010 will include this EMC I’m not sure it will be completed…

If you need it, tell me and I will finish and post it!

It’s been a couple a months since the official launch of Exchange 2010 in Berlin and although it’s the best Exchange version by far yet my wish list  still had some entries left… I say had because today the Exchange team announced Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2010 and I’m impressed by how much work that has been put in to SP1.

I strongly recommend you to read the blog at msexchangeteam.com for the full (but still more to come later) list of features that are announced today but I give you my favorites here.

• Server side features to import .PST files to mailboxes.
• Support for Personal Archive in Outlook 2007. I think this is great and a must to get people to use the Personal Archive.
• Better performance in OWA. OWA is replacing a lot of Outlook clients and by a good reason, OWA rocks! Now that OWA get’s even faster and better looking I’m sure even more users will use OWA as a “real” client and not only something you use when Outlooks not available.
• Create Retention Tags and Retention policies in EMC. I think we all agree that we have too many unwanted emails in our mailboxes and we have probably all experienced a lost email that’s important to us. Retention policies is a good way to help in this area but it’s been hard for many to get started because Power Shell still is hard for some.
• Manage mobile device Allow/Block/Quarantine in EMC.
• Recursive public folder settings management (including permissions) in EMC

This week alone I have heard from two different companies that their Exchange servers didn’t work. In both cases it’s been due to the fact that someone has patched Exchange. Patching/updating is a good thing but there are some things to think about!

1. Only update Exchange with an account that has permissions to admin Exchange (it’s recommended to use the same account as you used to install Exchange)
   
2. Update the roles in this order:
   • CAS
   • HUB
   • Mailbox

   I know this is old info but when people are on vacation and someone else is running the systems things like this happens so I thought a little reminder was in order.

   You can find more info below about installing updates:

   How to Install Update Rollups in a CCR Environment

   How to Install Update Rollups in a Single Copy Cluster

   Good update info by Amit Tank

This is a question I have been asked several times and I still see it on different forums so I thought I would give you a hint about what you need to configure when you setup Exchange 2007 for both internal and external access.

In the given example I use mailmaster.local for the internal URL’s just to stress the difference between the internal and external URLs. mailmaster.se is of course the external URLs.

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity “CASServer\EWS (Default Web Site)” -InternalURL https://casserver.mailmaster.local/EWS/Exchange.asmx -ExternalURL https://webmail.mailmaster.se/EWS/Exchange.asmx

Set-OABVirtualDirectory -Identity “CASServer\OAB (Default Web Site)” -InternalURL https://casserver.mailmaster.local/OAB -ExternalURL https://webmail.mailmaster.se/OAB

Set-OutlookAnywhere -Server CASServer -ExternalHostname “webmail.mailmaster.se”

Set-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory -Identity “CASServer\Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync (Default Web Site)” -ExternalURL https://webmail.mailmaster.se/Microsoft-Server-Activesync

If you use Unified Messaging this should also be configured:
Set-UMVirtualDirectory -Identity “CASServer\UnifiedMessaging (Default Web Site)” -InternalURL https://casserver.mailmaster.local/UnifiedMessaging/Service.asmx -ExternalURL https://webmail.mailmaster.se/UnifiedMessaging/Service.asmx

So to do this, just replace CASServer.mailmaster.se with the name of your CAS and webmail.mailmaster.se with your external hostname.

Microsoft has released Rollup 8 for Exchange 2007 SP1.

You can read more about what it contains here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968012

And a direct link to the download you find here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e1f5c8b2-c4f2-4eba-849b-e464d4f2869c&displaylang=en

Rollup 8 will be released to Microsoft Update on May 26.

Rollup 7 is out there and you can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2074fefd-fa1a-4c3e-bf72-94585e454150

And you will find the KB for the complete list of fixes in roulup 7 here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960384

There is no urgent security fixes in rollup 7 and the major things has to do with standby continuous replication, SCR. Rollup 7 will be released to Windows update on March 24.

Don’t forget to install rollups (this and others) with a account with the right permissions, read this for more information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996881.aspx

Rollup 6 is released and you should instal it right away. One of the things included in the update is a securityupdate and it’s classified a critical update, you can read more about it in this security bulletin:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS09-003.mspx

Among the other things fixed in Rollup 6 is IE 8 support in OWA.

Please note that the update will overwrite any custom scripts in OWA, like custom logonscreen, so backup your custom scripts before installation!

For the complete list of things updated or fixed see here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959241

As you might have noticed if you have a CCR-environment, Windows update won’t detect the Rollup 6 and you will need to download and install it manually, you can download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=93cb3f66-ae72-4356-bdbf-35029cff6df1&displaylang=en

As you probably know you can just add updates and hotfixes as you want to install into the updates-directory in Exchange 2007. But there is a problem… If you put Rollup 5 for SP1 in updates and install a Hub Transport server the setup will halt and give you an error message like this:

Error:

Service ‘MSExchangeAntispamUpdate’ failed to reach status ‘Running’ on this server. Cannot start service MSExchangeAntispamUpdate on computer ‘.’. The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

See screenshot:

I have not yet found a solution to the problem but what you can do is to restart your server, run the setup again it will start in Maintenance Mode and you can continue the setup. I have seen this on all the servers I have installed yet when I have included the Rollup. And the reason I post this blog now is that today I decided to really test it and run one setup without the Rollup included and that worked just fine and then I installed an exactly the same second HUB and I got the error. I all cases it has always worked fine after a reboot and complete the installation in Maintenance Mode.

And yes, Rollup 5 is installed after you complete the setup!

I just happened to run across this great info about all updates and what has been done with Exchange 2007 in December. Take a look!

You can now download Rollup 5 for SP1.

Rollup 5 fixes a lot of things, one of them the very annoying problems with OAB-gen on CCR-clusters.

You can download here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=652ed33a-11a1-459c-8ffe-90b9cbfe7903&DisplayLang=en

Rollup 5 will be available on Microsoft Update on the 9th of December, until then you can only download it from the link above