What's New with Microsoft Exchange 2016 and Office 365
1. THE EXCHANGE HYBRID CONFIGURATION WIZARD
NOW RUNS FROM THE CLOUD.
section’s title is a bit of a misnomer, since all Exchange 2016 installations
The Exchange hybrid configuration wizard wears many hats: It configures
deployed single-role Exchange 2013 servers will have to adapt.
federation, authentication, cross-premises mail flow, availability and
3. EXCHANGE 2016 NOW SUPPORTS PROXY FROM
EXCHANGE 2013.
security. With tie-ins across such a wide spectrum, it’s no surprise this
wizard has had its share of bugs and issues since it first shipped with
Exchange 2010.
However, now the wizard’s code resides in the cloud, so it can be
analyzed, debugged and optimized by Microsoft constantly, without a
support incident being created to look at the customer’s environment.
Feedback can be submitted online. Look for a more stable and better
performing version of the hybrid configuration wizard in the near
future. The wizard will also work with a future cumulative update of
Exchange 2013.
2. ALL DEPLOYMENTS ARE NOW MULTI-ROLE.
Microsoft has been advocating multi-role deployment since Exchange
2010 — it’s simpler, more scalable, better balanced and ultimately
will be single-role: the Exchange Server 2016 role. Customers who
A common pain point during Exchange migrations has been the need
to completely build out your new load-balanced Exchange servers to
scale. This followed from Microsoft’s recommendation to point your
current namespace to the newest version of Exchange being deployed,
which meant that version needed to be able to support your entire
user population’s traffic load. This made sense because a newer code
base should understand how to proxy to an older code base, but not
necessarily vice versa.
Thankfully, Exchange 2013 will now know how to proxy back to a 2016
mailbox, provided Exchange 2013 is running the appropriate (but yet
to be announced) cumulative update. This will make transitions from
Exchange 2013 to Exchange 2016 much easier.
required for an Exchange deployment went from three in Exchange
4. THERE WILL BE NO MORE DAG CONTENT INDEXING
OVER THE NETWORK.
2010 (Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox, with Unified Messaging
This has been a highly requested feature since Exchange 2010. In an
cheaper since fewer Exchange licenses are required. The minimum roles
and Edge being optional) to two in Exchange 2013 (Client Access and
Mailbox, with Edge being optional).
Some customers chose to deploy single-role Exchange 2013 servers
against Microsoft’s best practices, but with Exchange 2016, they’ll have
no choice in the matter. Both client access and mailbox components
are now merged into one server role that behaves much like a 2013
multi-role server. Therefore, there is no longer a Client Access role or a
Mailbox Server role — just an Exchange 2016 Server role. So actually, this
3
Exchange 2010/2013 database availability group (DAG), not only did
Exchange transaction logs get shipped over the network, but content
indexing traffic (used to ensure that users can quickly search their
mailboxes) also went from the passive database copies to the active
database copy. This traffic traveled over the MAPI/public networks, even
if you had specified dedicated replication networks in the DAG. In some
cases, this content indexing traffic could be up to 1.5 times the volume of
the replication traffic itself — putting a huge burden on the network.
With Exchange 2016, we’ll be seeing a significant reduction in the amount
your Outlook client is in offline mode, the local search components will
of bandwidth used between DAG nodes because there will be no more
still be used, slowing the search.
DAG content indexing over the network. Therefore, you’ll be able to have
more copies of your databases while reducing your network costs. This
feature, which is expected sometime in the 2016 release cycle, is a huge
win for Exchange experts and network admins alike.
5. OUTLOOK 2016 WILL PREFER ONLINE SEARCHES.
Starting with 2013, Exchange started to use Fast Search and Transfer
(FAST), a Microsoft acquisition, for its search engine. Users using Outlook
Web App (OWA) or Outlook in online mode could query their mailboxes
for keywords and phrases using FAST content indexes stored on the
Exchange Server. Windows desktop search or Google Desktop could
be used to search the local .OST file of an Outlook profile, but growing
mailbox sizes has made that an impractical solution for components that
were never meant for 25GB mailboxes.
With increasingly large mailboxes, a robust search engine is a must, and
Microsoft has certainly delivered in Exchange 2016. When connected
to an Exchange 2016 mailbox, Outlook 2016 will prefer searching the
server-side content indexes instead of the local .OST file. However, if
4
6. EXCHANGE IS NOW SUPPORTED IN AZURE (AZURE
PREMIUM STORAGE REQUIRED).
First came the ability to place a DAG file share witness in Azure. Now,
customers who are willing to pay for the processing power can stretch a
DAG node itself into Azure, or maybe even a hybrid server. However, for
this option to be supported in production, you’ll need to be using Azure
Premium Storage, which means additional costs.
While this announcement does spur interesting discussions, Microsoft
has been quick to state this solution isn’t for everyone. Not only will
an on-premises or Office 365 solution likely be cheaper, but planning
and sizing Exchange on servers that you don’t control adds design and
operational complexity.
7. PUBLIC FOLDER DATA CAN BE PLACED ON HOLD.
Modern public folders in Exchange 2016 can be placed on hold.
This feature is of particular interest for organizations concerned with
compliance and discovery. If you need to keep public folder data in its
original state during a legal or compliance request, you can place data
Please complete the form to gain access to this content
