Despite not being present, the information presented at Microsoft Ignite can be followed by monitoring certain sources on social media. Twitter still seems to be the platform of choice, but you may need to narrow down your stream of tweets using filters or only monitor a selected group of people. For example, the stream of tweets during the keynote using the hashtag #MSIgnite was overwhelming.

This post is an overview of things announced at Microsoft Ignite 2015 related to Exchange. Note that information presented at Ignite regarding Exchange 2016 was all subject to change as Exchange 2016 is still a work in progress.

Rumor on day 1 was that Microsoft Ignite is going to be in Chicago for the next 4 years as well. That is at least true for next year, as Microsoft announced that Ignite 2016 will be held in Chicago from May 9th to May 13th, 2016.

Roadmap

• Exchange 2016 Public beta announced for Summer 2015. RTM is expected Fall/Winter 2015.
• Customers can join the Exchange 2016 TAP program at http://aka.ms/joinoffice.
• Office 2016 is now in Public Review, and is available at here.
• Office Graph and Delve will be able to digest on-premises information via Hybrid connector and SharePoint 2016.

Architecture

• Exchange 2016 will only have the Preferred Architecture multi-role setup, so no more CAS or Mailbox server-only deployments. Visible in Setup UI as well as Unattended setup (roles parameter).
• The Edge role will be available in RTM.
• More emphasis on Preferred Architecture, which isn’t very different for Exchange 2016 from Exchange 2013:
  • DAG design with unbound symmetrical model.
  • Four database copies (2 in each DC), 3 database copies and one lagged copy (7 days).
  • FSW in Azure or 3rd data center (preferred).
  • Single NIC for client and replication traffic.
  • Use commodity hardware with 20-24 core/up to 196GB nodes, utilizing JBOD with large disks, multiple databases per volume, Autoreseed with hot spare and using ReFS formatted, BitLocked encrypted data volumes.
  • Office WebApp Server farm in each DC with bound namespace and affinity.
• Exchange 2016 MAPI/CDO is death – use RestAPI’s or Exchange Web Services (EWS).
• MAPI/HTTP will be the default client protocol for Outlook with Exchange 2016. MAPI/HTTP will be a per-user setting in Exchange 2016. For Exchange 2013, the per-user setting will be introduced with a future CU.
• Office WebApp Server required to view or edit Office documents from OWA 2016.
• When required, scale up by add another node rather than scale up by adding resources like CPU or memory.
• DAGs spanning more than 2 data centers are not recommended.
• Use public and private namespace for Exchange 2016 Outlook Anywhere to leverage Kerberos for internal authentication.
• For Exchange 2016, claims-based authentication will require Windows 2016 ADFS (version 4?).
• The Exchange team put up a blog post on Exchange 2016 architecture here.

Deployment

• Exchange 2016 can proxy traffic from Exchange 2013 (down-level proxy)  and vice-versa (up-level proxy). This means you don’t have to upgrade Exchange servers in your internet-facing site prior to upgrading other locations. Up-level proxy transition is preferred.
• Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2016 transition path is same experience as Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013. Regarding Kerberos authentication, check guidance here.
• Exchange 2016 can co-exist with Exchange 2010 SP3 RU11+ or Exchange 2013 CU10+. Exchange 2013 + 2016 can share one single Alternate Service Account (ASA) for Kerberos authentication.
• There is no co-existence possible with Exchange 2007, which means you will need to perform a double-hop migration if you want to transition from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2016.
• Exchange 2016 will support installation on Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 10 (2016).
• Exchange 2016 will require Windows Server 2008 R2 Forest and Domain Functional Levels or up, running at least on Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controllers.
• Exchange 2016 will support at least Outlook 2010 SP2 with KB2956191 and KB2965295, Outlook 2013 SP1 with KB3020812, and Outlook 2016 desktop clients.
• Exchange 2016 will require .NET Framework 4.5.2. Scalability improvements coming in .NET Framework 4.6 (release candidate in preview, don’t install yet).
• Office WebApp Server can’t be installed on Exchange 2016 server, and requires web publishing through bound namespace (and thus possibly certificate implications) anywhere you want to work with attachments from OWA 2016. Don’t expose internal Office WebApp namespace externally. Use Set-OrganizationConfig -WACDiscoveryEndpoint and restart MSExchangeOWAAppPool to configure Office WebApp Server for OWA.
• Certificate names required:
  • Exchange 2010 + 2016: Bound= 12, Unbound= 7
  • Exchange 2013 + 2016: Bound= 10, Unbound= 7
  • Exchange 2010 + 2013+ 2016: Bound= 10, Unbound= 7
  • Of course, internal MAPI endpoints do not require entry on certificate.
• Use a dedicated Active Directory site to install and configure Exchange before moving them to a production site.
• Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2016 introduce new OAB, specify existing OAB on all mailbox databases before installing Exchange 2013/2016.
• After introducing Exchange 2016 to your environment, move the SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9} system mailbox to Exchange 2016, or you won’t be able to export admin audit logs, perform In-Place discovery searches etc.
• When dimensioning your Exchange deployment, use the calculator.
• By disabling an Anti-Virus product for troubleshooting, you don’t remove their filter driver. Uninstall if you suspect AV product, or use fltmc to list or unload filter driver.
• Recommended to set lagged copies to 7 days delay.
• Exchange 2016 will allow adding mailbox database copies with ConfigurationOnly to postpone automatic seeding. Fast Database Reseeds allows for up to 10 parallel reseeds.
• On the Exchange server configuration:
  • Use “High Performance” Power Plan.
  • Disable Hyperthreading in physical deployments.
  • Use battery-backed storage controller with 1:3 Read:Write ratio.
  • For RAID, use stripe sets of 1+ factors of 256KB
  • Use GPT partitions
  • Host Exchange binaries on NTFS with 64K cluster size.
  • Host Exchange data on ReFS volumes with Data Integrity Feats disabled.
  • Use BitLocker to secure Exchange volumes.
  • Use JetStress with BitLocker and Virus Scanner if you’re going to use those in production.
  • Do not disable entire IPv6 stack.
  • Do not disable Exchange services post installation.
  • Do not restrict the dynamic TCP port range, e.g. do not use ‘netsh int ipv4 set dynamicport tcp startport=X numberofports=Y‘.
  • Use Exchange Health Checker script to verify configuration, available here.

Virtualization

• Exchange 2013 deployments are now supported on Azure IaaS virtual machine for production environments when using Azure Premium Storage. Amazon AWS is not supported. Most cost-effective remains Exchange On-Premises on physical hardware (or Exchange Online). Official guidance has been updated to reflect this here.
• When virtualizing Exhange:
  • Do not use memory overcommit.
  • Hyperthreading is OK, but size for physical cores.
  • Do not oversubscribe CPUs, causes queue growth, increased IOPS due to lower indexing throughput, RPC latency issues.
  • Size like physical deployment, but add overhead for CPU (10%).
• Exchange 2013 now supports Dynamic VHDX (not VHD!) disks for Hyper-V deployments. Will apply to Exchange 2016 as well. JetStress tests showed only 2% additional writes penalty for VHDX (for VHD 20%).

Storage

• Exchange 2016 will require 22% lower IOPS when compared to Exchange 2013 RTM. That means that since Exchange 2003 with 1 IOPS per mailbox, we are down to 0.04875 IOPS per mailbox.
• Search index will use passive database copies for indexing, instead of copying indexes from the active copy.
• Delayed LAG play down, depending on disk health (delayed if disk latency more than  20ms). Replay Lag Manager will be enabled by default, for automatic play down of lagged copies when insufficient copies remain available.
• Usage of ReFS for Exchange data volumes should result in less corruption, thus less reseeds or rebuilds. Exchange 2016 can detect database corruption through DB Divergence Detection. Loose Truncation will make sure Log Files won’t fill up disk space after extended outages.
• Exchange 2013 and later will report more accurately on mailbox sizes. Accommodate for 30% increase when moving mailboxes from Exchange 2010 or earlier.
• Autoreseed in Exchange 2016 can fix a single database on a volume.
• Exchange 2016 Workload Management (WLM) adds Disk Latency Monitor. Can throttle non-critical workloads based on measured disk latencies.
• Exchange 2016 adds predictive controller or hard disk failure, based on disk read and write latency trends, bad block detection or disk failures.

Availability

• Database Availability Groups are now by default deployed without an cluster administrative access point or cluster name object (CNO). This reduces complexity and dependencies, but you may need to check with for example your backup vendor as many 3rd party products still access Exchange through this CNO.
• Exchange 2016 database fail-overs will be 33% faster. Given that Exchange 2013 database fail-overs are about 10 seconds, that should mean they are down to 6-7 seconds.
• Recommended load-balancing configuration for Exchange 2016 is single namespace, Layer 7 and no affinity. Use load balancer with per-service monitors and features like Slow Ramp (F5) or Least Connections with Slow Start Time (KEMP) to grant servers time to initialize and warm-up.
• Office WebApp Server requires affinity on the load-balancer.
• As Exchange 2016 can proxy traffic to Exchange 2013 and vice-versa, both versions can co-exist in the same load balancer server pool.
• Get-MailboxServerRedundancy allows to prioritize repairs and upgrades by inspecting the DAG member servers, database copies and their state.

Management

• You can manage Exchange 2016 objects from Exchange 2013 Management Shell and Administrative Console and vice-versa. Limited for Exchange 2010, recommended to use Exchange 2010 management tools to manage Exchange 2010.
• An Exchange 2013 Managed Availability tool was released (MATS) to assist in troubleshooting and diving in the Management Availability related events. The tool is available here.
• ExMon, the Exchange Server User Monitor, will be back.
• Exchange 2016 Workload Management introduces policies to limit or block mailbox moves during peak hours.

Public Folders

• Modern Public Folder migration scripts in $exscripts folder are likely to be outdated. Always use the latest Modern Public Folder migration scripts, which are available here.
• It’s recommended to host Modern Public Folders in dedicated databases.
• Modern Public Folders are here to stay, but emphasis will shift to Office 365 Groups. Groups are also expected to replace Distribution Lists. Distribution List naming policies will help enforcing naming policy on Groups. Tool named ‘Hummingbird’ to be made available to move from DL to Groups, or script conversion using new UnifiedGroup cmdlets.

Compliance

• Exchange 2016 will allow you to put Public Folders on In-Place Hold.

Features

• Modern attachments in Outlook 2016, Exchange 2016 and SharePoint 2016 allows on-premises customers to offload attachment storage to SharePoint, just sending a link and setting permissions through Outlook. Also, Outlook 2016 contains a convenient MRU list to select recently touched Office documents as attachment. Note that SharePoint is on the roadmap for 2016, which could imply that modern attachments will not be available when Exchange 2016 RTM’s.
• OWA 2016 will contain a revised ribbon with additional buttons to triage e-mail more quickly, e.g. for archiving or sweep (similar to functionality currently found in outlook.com formerly known as Hotmail). It also contains an Undo button.
• Outlook 2016 and Exchange 2016 will use always search online. Hopefully this will result in consistent search results between Outlook, OWA and ActiveSync devices.
• Being able to restore items from the recoverable items with folder preservation is on Microsoft’s radar.

Exchange Hybrid

• Hybrid Configuration Wizard is now downloadable app, similar to previous OAuth configuration step in HCW. It works with Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2016 deployments, contains AADSync multi-forest support, and OAuth enhancements for MFA configuration. Allows team to introduce changes more quickly.
• When configuring Hybrid, point your MX records to Exchange Online Protection (EOP) to prevent possible issues with SPF, DMARC or DKIM. This however requires EOP licenses at day 1.
• 3rd party SMTP gateways sitting between Exchange On-Premises and EOP is not supported.
• New Hybrid Migration troubleshooter can be found here.
• Be advised that Exchange Hybrid is not compatible with Alternate Login ID or AlternateID for short. More information here.

Exchange Online / Office 365

• Exchange Online runs 50.000+ servers hosting 1.2M database copies. Every month, 3.5M database fail-overs occur, 100’s server fail, while adding 1000’s of servers. Still, Exchange Online maintains an availability rate of 99.95%!
• The Office 365 first release option, which will receive updates and new features first, will have the option to enable this option for the entire organization or per user.
• Document Tracking now live in Office 365 and clients when using the Azure RMS connector. More information here.
• Latest Azure Active Directory Sync has password write-back, so passwords changes in Office 365 are synced back to Active Directory on-premises. Get it here.
• Currently in preview for Azure Active Directory Sync are user write-back (user created in Office 365 is synced back to Active Directory on-premises) and Groups write-back.
• Office 365 to introduce dynamic Office 365 Groups, which will utilize recipient filters against Azure AD, and auto-expiring and other controls for Office 365 Groups housekeeping.

Note that you can download the Ignite session videos and slides for offline viewing as they become available. A script to accomplish this is available here.

Special thanks to Jeff Guillet, Dave Stork, Andy David, Tony Redmond, Bhargav Shukla John Barsodi, Nathan O’Bryan, John A Cook, Greg Tiber, Ingo Gegenwarth, Richard Hay, Jetze Mellema and Randall Vogsland for keeping us Exchange peeps updated from Ignite!