Get
Ready for Exchange Server 2003
Host: Shivaram Venkatesh, Technical Specialist - Microsoft India
February
28, 2003
Deepak_MS: Hello Everyone!
Deepak_MS: Welcome to the MSDN India Chat
Deepak_MS: today's topic as you would all know is about upcoming features
of Exchange Server 2003
Deepak_MS: previously code named as "Titanium"
Deepak_MS: Today we have with us Shivaram Venkatesh, who works has
a technical specialist for Microsoft and is currently based out of
Bangalore
Deepak_MS: Over to you Shivaram! Let us start with a brief intro to
Exchange 2003 and then I will start taking your questions
Shivaram_MS: Hi everybody, this is Shivaram Venkatesh,
welcome to this session on 'Titanium' - Code name for the next release
of Exchange server
Shivaram_MS: Let me give a brief introduction to Exchange
Server 2003 - Code named Titanium. As you are probably aware, Exchange
2000 has been around for about 2.3 years now and this new release
packs a real punch. The biggest things that are packed in are the
conformance to the Microsoft Secure and trustworthy computing initiative.
Shivaram_MS: It brings in new much awaited features like
MAPI compression, RPC over HTTP, new and improved OWA, S/MIME over
OWA and so on
Shivaram_MS: instead of me going on and on, questions
are welcome
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): Can Exchange 2003 Beta2 act as a Front-end server
for existing Exchange 2000 Back-end servers?
Shivaram_MS: Hi Sastry well, that depends on how the topology
has been framed. Exchange 2003 can act as a FE to the E2000 BE servers.
Shivaram_MS: there are however significant benefits on
running E2003 on Win2003 - such as RPC over HTTP, new cool OWA interface,
Spell check on OWA for 5 languages and so on.
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): Will we get all the Exchange 2003 OWA features
in this scenario
Shivaram_MS:No, as I had mentioned all the above will
only be available on Win2003 and E2003. That however requires a little
revamp of the AD infrastructure
Deepak_MS: (Rahul): Deepak, on which OS can exchange 2003 beta2 be
used?
Shivaram_MS: Hi Rahul, it can be used on Win2000, SP3
and Win2003 servers
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): can you elaborate on the FE part, what kind of
revamping is required for AD and will we get the OWA (Office 11 kind
of features) in the FE
Shivaram_MS: yeah sure. Win2003 adds significant benefits
on AD over Win2000. Now in the ideal scenario, Win2003 should be your
primary DCs and the GCs local to the network on whcih E2003 is on.
Shivaram_MS: Now E2003 features that I described above
are only available on Win2003. But this again does not require an
upgrade of the Win200 AD to Win2003, but will work best with the new
GAL improvement offered in AD in Win2003
Shivaram_MS: so in short, your setup described above will
be optimal when your AD is on Win2003 DCs and E2003 is installed as
an FE in that environment
Shivaram_MS: I am done with the FE question
Deepak_MS: (Amod): how much is it helpful in intelligent use of server
and storage resources?
Shivaram_MS: Hi Amod, good question. In E2003 and Win2003,
when Outlook 11 is being used, you get the following advantages
Shivaram_MS: 1: MAPI compression upto 70 - 80% depending
on the payloads
Shivaram_MS: 2: 'Drizzle' streaming of data. 1'st 254
bytes - headers are downloaded first into Outlook's cache mode which
enables the user to immediately view the abstract of the mail, then
the rest follow
Shivaram_MS: 3: Exchange itself because of this compression,
has lesser in memory processing and lesser usage of Virtual Memory
for such processing. This leads to better load management and more
scalability
Shivaram_MS: Also if the /3GB switch is used (now possible
in all Editions of Win2003 - Except Web server edition) then E2003
rocks!
Shivaram_MS: I am done with the storage question
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): We have installed Ex 2003 as a FE in our E2k
environment, but we are not getting the new OWA features in the FE,
we are still getting the old OWA interface, but when we make it as
BE , OWA features are enabled for the mailboxes residing on this…
Shivaram_MS: Sastry, this is quite strange. But the ideal
scenario is when your FE is migrated to E2003 and you should see an
immediate change to the new OWA. What you will not see however are
things like MAPI compression and so on.
Shivaram_MS: Are you accessing the FE from within the
network? If this is the case then you may be hitting the old BE which
still will show you the older interface. That is why when you migrated
the BE, you saw the new OWA.
Shivaram_MS: this could be one of the issues you are seeing.
Maybe we can actually discuss this in detail and come to the root
of the problem...
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): how do we enable OWA caching in E 2003?
Shivaram_MS: Sastry, could you be a little more specific
on OWA caching? Did you mean Outook caching?
Deepak_MS: What are the new big features in Outlook Web Access ?
Shivaram_MS: Deepak, OWA now in E2003 is really cool.
The whole UI has now changed and a lot of it is DHTML. We now have
2 displays of OWA. Rich and Low level. Rich allows for spell check,
cool UI, out of office, S/MIME(requires a control on the server) ...
Shivaram_MS: there is also the Low level interface specifically
meant for cHTML, xHTML based deices which can display OWA really well
Shivaram_MS: when this is selected, then the server automatically
selects which CSS to apply and then streams tiny packets to the devices
such as phones, PPCs, and GPRS devices to display OWA. The rich clients
are default apart from this we also have S/MIME and signed mails etc
which however requires an ActiveX control to be installed on the local
computer from which OWA is being accessed
Shivaram_MS: really cool stuff is now possible in OWA
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): I am sorry.. I was referring to Outlook Caching
and how it works
Shivaram_MS: Sastry, Outlook caching is now enabled by
default in Outlook 11. This implies that when a new mails arrives,
the server trickles down info which Outlook caches and then displays
immediately. Also GAL entries, lookups and so on are cached by Outlook
11.
Shivaram_MS: This implies lesser load on the server and
lesser round trips for each communication with the GC/Exchange.
Shivaram_MS: All actions performed by the user such as
opening a message, looking up an address and changing to a private
folder, involve server transactions and roundtrips which are now reduced
Deepak_MS: (Amod): How does it protect the messaging environment?
Shivaram_MS: Hi Amod, 1: E2003 now supports IPSec between
the FE and BE as well. This ensures the highest security between the
FE and BE in a DMZ
Shivaram_MS: 2: E2003 comes with built in Spam filters
and provisions for including Black lists of known spammers. AVAPIs
for Anti virus are much stronger and are gateway sensitive. Need not
scan when the mail is processed, they can be scanned when the mail
hits the SMTP buffer itself
Shivaram_MS: then we have Outlook 11 with Kerberos as
the default authentication protocol instead of NTLM like previous
versions.
Shivaram_MS: Also the support for S/MIME in OWA is a big
step in mail security.
Shivaram_MS: There are many more, but due to brevity,
I will urge you to look into Technet for more information
Shivaram_MS: I am done with the security question
Deepak_MS: (Go-Gates): What are the new features in Conference server?
Shivaram_MS: Hi Go-Gates, there is no change to Conf server
as of now. It is status Quo. MS is moving towards a single RTC based
media integration with video, audio and data conf which will be in
a separate offering soon.
Shivaram_MS: I am done with the conf question
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): When is the Beta3 getting released?
Shivaram_MS: Sastry, that info is not available as of
now, will be posted on the Exchange site as soon as the dev team decides
to make this info public
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): Can you tell me how KMS is integrated with CA
and what additional features are added into KMS?
Shivaram_MS: Sastry, well there have been some improvements
that we have made to our CA services, but the Exchange KMS service
will be more or less the same as it used to be. But the direction
will be the Windows CA
Deepak_MS: Today if I need to connect to my exchange server over internet,
and if I don't have owa setup, I need to VPN into my network, does
Exchange 2003 address that?
Shivaram_MS: Deepak, we have a cool new feature in E2003
by which users simply need an Internet connection and they can fire
up Outlook 11 and simply leave it on. Outlook uses something called
"RPC over HTTP"...
Shivaram_MS: where it would connect over the internet
to the FE, authenticate on Kerberos and then begins to download its
mails
Shivaram_MS: Outlook 11 detects the connection speed and
communicates this to the E2003 server, which then begins to stream
data at that speed. Outlook also auto detects the type of connection
- TCP or HTTP and then uses that connection type to connect and then
begin streaming. It is really cool. The FE behaves as a RPC proxy
to the BE and then streams this over HTTP to Outlook.
Shivaram_MS: Hence the users need not know anything about
this process. All they need is an Internet connection and voila the
mails begin to download like the local LAN.
Deepak_MS: (Sastry): why Active/Active clustering is still not supported
by Ms for Exchange?
Shivaram_MS: Sastry, Active-Active clustering is complex
and depends on the scenario. Can you highlight the scenario in which
you wished to use Active-Active cluster and your SLA for this?
Deepak_MS: How can Exchange 2003 help me with Server Consolidation?
Shivaram_MS: Deepak, E2003 with Win2003 supports larger
number of users per server, more number of nodes in a cluster and
better performance on a lesser number of FE servers on an NLB when
compared to Win2000 and E2000. This will lead to lesser servers with
a higher…
Shivaram_MS: performance
Shivaram_MS: I am done with the server consolidation question
Deepak_MS: One more question Shivaram, and I think it is a valid one
in India's connectivity scenario...what happens if the link between
outlook and exchange goes down while they are synchronizing?
Shivaram_MS: Deepak, When Outlook 11 is used to synchronize
data against an Exchange Titanium server, an advanced Incremental
Change Synchronization (ICS) check-pointing algorithm is used. This
ensures that data does not need to be re-replicated if network connectivity
is lost during synchronization Traditionally, the ICS mechanism was
based on large check-point windows. While this method provided good
performance, if synchronization had to be restarted after a network
outage, replication would have to start from the last check-point
window
Shivaram_MS: Hence now with Outlook 11, the user is totally
transparent to what kind of connectivity he is using, LAN, HTTP etc,
Outlook 11 auto detects this and begins the CheckPointing
Deepak_MS: Is there a way now - to measure the performance of the
messaging environment - say perf. between exchange and outlook
Shivaram_MS: Deepak, Outlook 11 has the built-in ability
to track RPC performance data and periodically post this to the Exchange
Titanium server.
Shivaram_MS: Exchange administrators can query this performance
data either through (Microsoft Operations Manager) MOM or by looking
at the new "Client" performance monitor counters under the "MSExchangeIS"
performance monitor object on the Exchange server.
Deepak_MS: Ok Shivaram, that brings us to the end of this chat...
Deepak_MS: thank you very much for joining us today!
Shivaram_MS: Thanks a lot everybody for some great questions,
Shivaram_MS: bye and take care
Deepak_MS: Next week we'll discuss VB.NET - the chat will be hosted
by Raj Chaudhuri from Microsoft..
