Monthly Archives: July 2012

Exchange Server “2013” Preview is out

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Exchange 2013 preview release will subject to change when it reaches to RTM. Installing Exchange 2013 Preview is not for production environment.

Exchange 2013 preview is for simplicity of scale, hardware utilization, and failure isolation. With Exchange 2013 Preview, they reduced the number of server roles to two:

  1. the Client Access server role
  2. the Mailbox server role.

The Mailbox server includes all the traditional server components found in Exchange 2010

  • the Client Access protocols
  • Hub Transport service
  • Mailbox databases, and Unified Messaging.

The Mailbox server handles all activity for a given mailbox. The Client Access server provides authentication, redirection, and proxy services.

The Client Access server itself doesn’t do any data rendering. It is a thin and stateless server. There is never anything queued or stored on the Client Access server.

The Client Access server offers all the usual client access protocols: HTTP, POP and IMAP, and SMTP.

Managed Store works with the Microsoft Exchange Replication service to manage mailbox databases, which continues to use Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) as the database engine. Exchange 2013 Preview includes significant changes to the mailbox database schema that provide many optimizations over previous versions of Exchange. In addition to these changes, the Microsoft Exchange Replication service is responsible for all service availability related to Mailbox servers. The architectural changes enable faster database failover and better physical disk failure handling.

The Managed Store is also integrated with the FAST search engine (the same search engine used by SharePoint 2013 Preview) to provide more robust indexing and searching.

No more Exchange Management Console (EMC) Administration is now performed using the new web-based Exchange Administration Center and the Exchange Management Shell (3.0)

All certificate management is performed on the Client Access server. The Mailbox server has a self-signed certificate installed by default. The Client Access server automatically trusts the self-signed certificate on the Exchange 2013 Preview Mailbox server, so clients will not receive warnings about a self-signed certificate not being trusted provided that the Exchange 2013 Preview Client Access server has a non-self-signed certificate from either a Windows certificate authority (CA) or a trusted third party.

Exchange 2013 Preview offers greater integration with SharePoint 2013 Preview and Lync 2013 Preview. Benefits of this enhanced integration include:

  • Users collaborate more effectively by using site mailboxes.
  • Lync Server 2013 Preview can archive content in Exchange 2013 Preview and use Exchange 2013 Preview as a contact store.
  • Discovery Managers can perform In-Place eDiscovery and Hold searches across SharePoint 2013 Preview, Exchange 2013 Preview, and Lync 2013 Preview data.
  • Oauth authentication allows partner applications to authenticate as a service or impersonate users where required.

Public folders in Exchange 2013 Preview now take advantage of the existing high availability and storage technologies of the mailbox store. The public folder architecture uses specially designed mailboxes to store both the hierarchy and the public folder content. This new design also means that there is no longer a public folder database. Public folder replication now uses the continuous replication model. High availability for the hierarchy and content mailboxes is provided by the DAG. With this design, we’re moving away from a multi-master replication model to a single-master replication model.

Exchange 2013 Preview continues to make use of the database availability group (DAG) platform introduced in Exchange 2010 for both high availability and site resilience. Exchange 2013 Preview also includes enhancements to the DAG platform that improve manageability and reduce costs. These features include:

  • Managed availability.
  • Managed Store.
  • Automatic configuration and management of DAG networks.
  • Management via the Exchange Administration Center.
  • Enhancements to DAG-related cmdlets to introduce new scenarios.

PRE-REQUISITES

INSTALLATION TYPE

  • Install Exchange 2013 Using the Setup Wizard, Click here
  • Install Exchange 2013 in Unattended Mode, Click here

Remote Connectivity Analyzer gets an updated CAPTCHA experience

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The improvements to the Remote Connectivity Analyzer CAPTCHA experience. It was very annoying to have both password fields get blanked out if you got the challenge incorrect. While we can’t remove this “feature” completely, we hope the enhancements will make a big difference.

The latest version (V1.4) of the Remote Connectivity Analyzer has the following improvements:

We are using a new CAPTCHA service provided by an internal team!!! EHLO rocks again!!!

  • The challenge is NOT case sensitive, so it doesn’t matter if you type upper or lower case letters. We also note this on the web page.
  • The CAPTCHA challenges will not include hard to distinguish letters/numbers. For example 2 and Z or O and 0.
  • If you get the challenge wrong, the password entries will not be removed.
  • Once you enter a correct response to the challenge, you will be verified for a set amount of time. This means you will not see additional CAPTCHA challenges until the timeout period expires.
  • The inbound SMTP test now inserts the IP address of the user performing the test into the test email message. The IP is also inserted into an SMTP Header (X-Originating-IP).
  • Fixed an issue in the Sender-ID test where certain DNS responses while evaluating the “exists” mechanism were incorrectly being treated as a TempError
  • The outbound SMTP Sender-ID tests now conform to the RFC specified limit of ten DNS-based mechanisms that can be used during the evaluation of the SPF record.

To know more, click here

Nikon firmware update…Released

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Nikon release Firmware updates for his range of camers.. Click here to know more. Select the appropriate model and click the link to download the firmware and user manual for how to update. Also you can refer to one of my collegue’s blog.

Firmware is a read only set of instructions that is embedded in a hardware device to either add or improve function. Sometimes there are two parts to a Nikon firmware update labeled A or B. Some updates will perform either A or B, and others may perform A and B. Some updates will perform both A and B at the same time, and other will only do one at a time. Please read the instructions carefully before performing the update, as firmware updates are permanent and cannot be ‘undone’ outside of the service department. Newer firmware versions will overwrite older versions and will also include all previous update changes.