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-- Maxpc Expert, Maxpc  2 out of 4 found this reivew helpful |
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| Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Codenamed 'Titanium’, Exchange 2003 has been under production for three years now. The enhanced feature-set and security make it well worth the wait Having been under development for such a long time, you’re probably thinking that there are a large number of changes in Exchange 2003. Well, you’re not wrong. From the security perspective, IPSec has been introduced, along with Kerberos authentication between the front and back-end servers. Also, you can now restrict sending to distribution lists and normal recipients so that the sender must be authenticated and have the correct permissions. On the performance front, a lot of work has been done to make Exchange work harder on existing hardware. Rather than it needing a newer, faster server to handle 2003, you’ll almost certainly find that it runs better than your existing version. This is partly thanks to the improved performance that Windows 2003 offers for large servers, but also because Exchange 2003 handles its jobs more intelligently. For example, out of office auto-replies are no longer sent when triggered by a message from a distribution list. And, on the topic of distribution lists, Exchange now caches the members of internal distribution lists so that it needs to query the Active Directory much less often. Administrators will almost certainly find that this is the easiest version of Exchange yet, because a number of new features have been implemented that correct niggling flaws. For example, you can now move several mailboxes from one server to another in one step using the Active Directory management console. However, the biggest new administration boost comes when you install Exchange on top of Windows Server 2003. Exchange 2003 takes advantage of the new Volume Shadow Copy service, which allows in-place, snapshot back-ups of your Exchange server. This functionality is remarkably quick, and ensures you get a fully atomic back-up without any downtime. Reliability boost After deployment ease, the next biggest improvement in Exchange 2003 is its reliability. During the initial phase of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing drive, new feature development in Exchange stopped entirely, with the focus instead turned to reliability and security of the overall system. The results of this are visible in the three key reliability improvements: larger clusters, faster failover, and recovery storage groups. If you used Exchange clustering in the past, you’ll know it’s the easiest and most dependable way of making sure your system continues to work despite serious hardware failure. This has been taken a step further by the fact that you can now have up to eight nodes in your cluster. Furthermore, whereas in previous versions of Exchange there used to be complicated dependencies between the various parts of the system, this has now been stripped to a minimum to ensure that the protocol services are independent of the main data store. While this is only likely to be important if you suffer hardware failure on a standalone machine, it’s reassuring to have, regardless. The final key reliability improvement is the addition of recovery storage groups, which function somewhat like a normal storage group, but are designed to let you directly restore an Exchange database without any fuss. If you suffer a disaster with a recovery storage group in place, you can literally transfer mailboxes from the back-up to another Exchange server as if it were a normal storage group. This is a big step forward from the current state of affairs, which forces you to restore the entire database to a spare server, then copy mail boxes. Web Access 2003 As always, the most visible changes in Exchange lie in the latest release of Outlook Web Access. There are dozens of new features in this release, which, along with the new Office 2003-style interface, make OWA more powerful than ever. To start with, server-side spell checking is implemented, as are message signatures and the new 'quick flags’ from Office 2003 - this brings the user interface even closer to that of Outlook itself. Another helpful addition is bi-directional language support, meaning that Hebrew and Arabic users can finally use OWA properly. OWA 2003 also implements full task management functionality, along with context-sensitive right-click support, with the end result being that the difference between OWA and Outlook is really down to a hair’s breadth. There have been two key security additions with this release of OWA, and these are URL redirection and attachment blocking. URL redirection kicks in whenever an OWA user receives a message with a URL in it. In previous versions of OWA, clicking this link took you directly to the URL. However, thanks to the way that HTTP works, this left an entry in the log of the website you clicked through to that said "this person came from OWA; here’s the name of the server, and the name of the message they were reading” - not very secure. With 2003, in the form of URL redirection, this problem has been eliminated. Attachment blocking is a very clever new feature that lets you stop people from downloading sensitive message attachments from outside your corporate network. With the fact that OWA 2003 now uses automatic connection time-outs to make sure that unattended sessions aren’t a security breach, this is definitely the most secure version of OWA yet. One particularly hyped new feature in Exchange 2003 is that the OWA service is now available to more than just desktop web browsers. Other Windows-powered devices, such as PDAs and Smartphones are able to connect to, and use OWA, albeit with a more limited interface depending on the capabilities of the client. At present, most companies are quite paranoid about wireless access, so it will be interesting to see how this new mobile functionality pans out. Best yet to come? Within Exchange 2003 there are a number of features that will lie dormant for the time being because they rely on Outlook 2003 to work. Perhaps the most anticipated new feature is HTTP access from Outlook - you’ll literally be able to use Outlook to connect to your front-end Exchange server over the Internet using HTTP or HTTPS. Secondly, Outlook 2003 introduces 'Cached Exchange Mode’, which sychronises with Exchange 2003 then works locally, only committing changes back to the Exchange server when necessary. Naturally this makes a large difference to performance, particularly for users on slow connections. Thirdly, offline sychronisation between Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003 is incremental, which means that if the process is interrupted before completion, Outlook and Exchange can resume synchronising from where they left off. Previously, the process had to be started from scratch, which meant large synchronisations over slow connections were almost impossible. Finally, Outlook 2003 automatically collects performance information about itself (for example, network latency), and sends it to Exchange 2003. Exchange then collates this information together with the information from other clients, letting you track and fix client connectivity problems much more easily. Overall, even without the new functionality coming with Outlook 2003, this release of Exchange has something for everyone. While the security improvements are welcome, and the performance improvements are predictable given the length of development, the chances are that the most welcome new feature will be the Volume Shadow Copy service support, which is likely to take a lot of pain and worry away from administrators. It’s worth keeping in mind that that particular piece of functionality is only available if you install Exchange on Windows Server 2003. However, the migration path is very smooth. Once you add into the mix the new features offered in conjunction with Outlook 2003, it becomes clear that Exchange 2003 brings client and server closer than ever, with the result being that people work smarter. Paul Hudson This article first appeared in PC Plus Issue 208 - November 2003 Related Links Compare Prices Click Here to Shop Format page for printing Email article to a friend ...
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| -- Pcauthority Expert, Pcauthority 1 out of 2 found this reivew helpful |
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| A robust and mature full-strength messaging and collaboration engine receives a host of useful updates and additional capabilities, particularly for mobile users. The best email, diary, contacts and r The arrival of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ...
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| Microsoft MS Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition Complete package |
| $849.99 - $1,149.00 |
| from 4 stores |
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