Outlook Anywhere runs best on 2008R2

Posted on May 1, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange team published a nice article on the different performance characteristics between Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 when running Outlook Anywhere against Exchange 2010. It seems Exchange 2010 Client Access Server can handle more than double the amount of clients when bound by CPU resources when running on Windows Server 2008 R2 instead of Windows Server 2008 SP2.

The team also expects big improvements in Exchange Server 2007 SP3, schedulded for 2nd half of 2010, because these improvements are caused by differences in the underlying Operating System, which means it will affect RPC/HTTP performance as well.

Another thing to notice is that above 3.000 users the MHz per Outlook Anywhere user for non-CAS roles, when used in combination with other server roles, are nearly flatline. Where Client Access Server shows a linear graph (steepness depending on Operating System used), Mailbox Servers show an average of 0.6 MHz per user and Hub Transport Servers around 0.25 per user. During testing, LoadGen’s OutlookAnywhere_100 profile was used, formerly known as Heavy User with 20 sends and 80 receives per day.

Be advised tests were performed with Basic Authentication; NTLM drops the number of users by only a small 2%.

You can find the article here.

MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The MAPI and CDO libraries, still required by some applications or scripts talking to Exchange, have been updated.

The libaries are meant to unwind the application and storage layers, making applications and code using these libraries independent of the underlying Exchange or Outlook version. It also enables certain applications/scripts to run remotely (mostly apps/scripts from the pre-PowerShell era). Only problem you can encounter is when applications/scripts make use of certain functionality only to be found in certain Exchange/Outlook versions, requiring specific MAPI or CDO library versions.

These libraries may be required by certain 3rd party applications, scripts, etc. that need to interface with Exchange, e.g. Blackberry Enterprise Server, the Transporter Suite (for Notes-Exchange co-existence/interoperability), Quest Exchange tools, etc. etc.

Note that MapiCDO release follows Exchange Server 2003’s lifecycle and it is recommended you upgrade your application or port your application/script to and start leveraging new Exchange interfaces, e.g. Exchange Web Services, Outlook Object Model or the Outlook MAPI Client Library.

ExchangeMapiCDO 1.2.1 version 6.5.8165.0 can be download here.

Exchange 2010 Item Recovery

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The MS Exchange Team blog had a great informative article yesterday on discovering and recovering items in Exchange 2010 RTM as well as SP1. I suggest you check the article located here.

For people asking why it’s rather quiet over on my blog, I haven’t had time to blog/tweet a lot due to personal circumstances. But this is behind me now, so I’ll be picking up where I left off ASAP. Thanks for bearing with me.

Rollup time

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Besides the Exchange 2007 SP2 RU4 of yesterday and this morning’s Exchange 2010 RTM RU3, Microsoft also released Exchange 2007 SP1 Rollup 10 (KB981407) and a security fix for Exchange 2003 SP2 (KB976702).

Both Exchange 2007 SP1 RU10 and the Exchange 2003 SP2 update fix the issue documented in security bulletin MS10-024, being a vulnerability issue in Microsoft Exchange and the Windows SMTP Service which could lead to a denial of service.

You can download Exchange 2007SP1 RU10 here and the Exchange 2003 SP2 fix here.

And pssst .. there’s even a Exchange 2000 SP3 fix here.

Exchange 2010 RTM Rollup 3

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Microsoft released Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 RTM (KB981401). This update raises Exchange 2010 version number to 14.0.694.0.

Not many hotfixes included in this rollup, but important ones, including a security fix. Here’s the list of changes included in this rollup:

981832 MS10-024: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange and Windows SMTP Service could allow denial of service
981664 RPC clients or MAPI on the Middle Tier clients may not receive responses from the mailbox server role on an Exchange 2010 server

To download this rollup, click here. The Exchange versions, builds and dates table has been updated accordingly and can be found here.