Exchange 2007 SP1 Preview

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 Preview

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has been released in the beginning of 2007, and most of us have not gotten used to the many new features (and to the tons of discontinued and deemphasized functionalities – read Exchange 2007 Discontinued Features and Exchange 2007 Deemphasized Functionality for more info).

Exchange 2007 is already being deployed all over the world, but since many features that were supposed to be introduced with the RTM version have been removed from the initial release. That is why many companies running previous versions of Exchange have decided to wait till Service Pack 1 will be released (the same is true for deployment of Windows Vista).

The Exchange Team Blog has published many of the new features that will be incorporated with SP1, here is a quick and partial list:

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR)

With Exchange 2007, we introduced Clustered Continuous Replication (CCR) for replication of data between 2 servers within a cluster within the same datacenter. With SCR, data replicates to a non-clustered server in a remote datacenter. If the primary datacenter becomes unavailable, the standby replica in the second datacenter is readily available to be activated.

Mobility

Great new policies for:

• Enforcing encryption of main memory contents on device

• Enforcing which applications are allowed/blocked from running on the device

• Enforcing networking capabilities: disable wifi, Bluetooth, infrared, external storage

• Enforcing communication capabilities: disable SMS, MMS, POP/IMAP, disable camera

Outlook Web Access (OWA)

SP1 will fill in the feature holes that we just didn’t have time to complete by RTM:

• Personal distribution lists

• S/MIME (why was this feature removed at all, no one knows!!!)

• Rules

• Monthly calendar view (one of the *other* missing features that were removed from Exchange 2007 and will be returned in SP1)

• Deleted items recovery (what about this missing feature? why was it removed in the first place?)

OWA 2007 SP1 spell checking will add support for:

• Arabic

• Korean

OWA 2007 SP1 will add support for viewing Office 2007 file formats as HTML.

Exchange Management Console

SP1 will fill in the GUI holes that we just didn’t have time to complete by RTM, including:

• Public folder configuration (finally!)

• POP and IMAP configuration

• SendAs permission configuration

• Delegation wizard scenarios

Web Services

New web service coverage will include:

• Public folder access

• Delegate management

• Folder permission management

IPv6

On Longhorn Server, we will support Exchange 2007 on native IPv6 networks.

Move Mailbox

Finally, after a lot of public pressure, the move mailbox administrator tool has been beefed up to include import and export to a .pst.

Exchange 2007 SP1 beta will be available through TechNet plus this April.

Links

You Had Me At EHLO… : Talking Exchange 2007 SP1