Frequently Asked Questions about Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is the next version of Microsoft Exchange Server, the industry's leading server for e-mail, calendaring, and unified messaging. The “2007” denotes the close alignment of this release with the Microsoft Office 2007 wave of products, which together deliver a best-in-class enterprise messaging and collaboration solution.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provides built-in protection technologies to help keep the e-mail system up and running and better protected from outside threats while allowing employees to work from wherever they are using a variety of clients including Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Web Access, and mobile devices. Exchange Server 2007 makes it easier for IT to deliver these new capabilities to their organizations by making the messaging environment easier to manage and more cost efficient. To learn more about Exchange Server 2007, visit the Exchange Server 2007 preview home page or try Exchange Serve 2007 Beta 2 for yourself.

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 provides the most complete e-mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks functionality available in an Exchange-compatible client. When used with Exchange Server 2007, Outlook 2007 users benefit from the new Scheduling Assistant, which automates time-consuming meeting and resource scheduling, and the ability to plan and customize out-of-office communications as well as Managed E-Mail Folders to facilitate compliance with internal and regulatory policies. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 also combine to enhance security with approaches that are easy to use and let users confidently send and receive sensitive business communications over e-mail. To learn more about how Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2007 work together, see Better Together: Do More with Mirosoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. You can find more information about Outlook 2007 on the Office 2007 preview home page.

You can find product documentation on the Exchange Server 2007 preview home or find technical information about Exchange Server 2007 on the Exchange Server TechCenter. You can also visit the Exchange Server Community Resource site for additional resources or read the Exchange Team Blog for updates on product information, common issues, and troubleshooting assistance. (You can also access documentation through F1 Help in the Exchange Server 2007 beta software.)

Exchange Server 2007 is expected to become generally available in late 2006 or early 2007.

Yes, Exchange Server 2007 will be an integral part of the "Longhorn" (code name for the next Windows release) version of Small Business Server (SBS) and the recently announced "Centro" mid-market server offering. SBS and Centro are expected to be released six to twelve months following the release of Microsoft Windows Vista.

Customers can choose to purchase the Exchange Enterprise client access license (CAL) or the Exchange Standard CAL. The Exchange Enterprise CAL is sold as an add-on to the Exchange Standard CAL. Two server editions will continue to be offered: Exchange Server Enterprise Edition and Exchange Server Standard Edition. Either CAL can be run against either server edition.

In addition to the improvements and new capabilities of the Exchange Standard CAL, the Exchange Enterprise CAL will include unified messaging, advanced compliance capabilities, and antivirus and anti-spam protection (on-premise and hosted).

Customers with Software Assurance agreements on their CALs will receive the Exchange Standard CAL that includes new features and improvements for 2007. Current Software Assurance customers can purchase the Exchange Enterprise CAL as an add-on. There is no change in Software Assurance for servers.

Pricing will be made available later this year on the Exchange Server 2007 site and through your reseller.

Exchange has been operating within the same 32-bit architecture for the past 10 years, since Exchange 4.0. The messaging environment has evolved over time into a mission-critical application for most businesses today, and demands placed on messaging systems will continue to grow. We witness this growth through the increase of e-mail traffic and larger attachments that now require larger mailboxes to store these messages. Users are also accessing their e-mail in more ways, such as with mobile devices, through Web browsers using Outlook Web Access, and other applications, including Microsoft Office Communicator, MSN desktop search, and Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. Trends indicate that demands on messaging systems will continue to grow and 64-bit servers provide the system architecture to meet these demands while reducing costs within organizations through server and disk storage consolidations. With a larger addressable space, the Exchange servers can utilize more memory thereby reducing the required input/output per user (IOPS), enabling the use of larger disks as well as low cost storage such as SATA2 drives. Testing at Microsoft has shown an IOPS decrease of approximately 70% with Exchange Server 2007 on 64-bit hardware. Our beta customers have been able to directly translate this into an increased utilization of current drives in their storage area networks (SAN) as well as new direct attached storage (DAS) topologies, thus significantly reducing their storage costs, which make up roughly 80 percent of hardware capital costs today.

Exchange Server 2007 is designed to be a stable, reliable enterprise messaging platform that delivers the fundamentals of e-mail and calendaring while providing innovative new capabilities. These new capabilities make the messaging system more cost effective and scalable for your organization and at the same time more productive for users accessing the system. Simply put, given the new capabilities of Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft could not guarantee a high-quality 32-bit version.

Exchange Server 2007 will support servers with "x64" processors. Most new servers today ship with processors from Intel and AMD that include this x64 support, called Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) by Intel and AMD64 by AMD. Exchange Server 2007 will not offer support for Itanium (IA-64) processors, which are intended for more processor-intensive database and business applications.

Exchange Server 2007 will not require 64-bit clients; 32-bit clients (such as Outlook) will be able to connect without issue to Exchange Server 2007 servers.

Yes, to deploy Exchange Server 2007, you will need an x64 edition of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2. Volume-licensing customers are free to exchange their 32-bit version of Windows for the 64-bit version at any time, using their media kits.

Most third-party 32-bit applications that work with Exchange Server 2003 will continue to function with Exchange Server 2007. Exceptions include applications that rely on 32-bit drivers that are not compatible with x64 systems and applications that call application programming interfaces (APIs) that are not included in Exchange Server 2007. We are working closely with our partners to ensure that they will have applications available to run alongside Exchange Server 2007.

When upgrading to Exchange Server 2007, you cannot perform an in-place server upgrade on an existing Exchange server. Instead, you must install a new Exchange Server 2007 system into the existing organization, and then move the required data to the new server–a process known as migration. Exchange Server 2007 will also support mixed environments that include Exchange 2000 Server and/or Exchange Server 2003, allowing for an easier and more gradual transition. You can find more detailed information about planning and deployment on the Exchange Server 2007 TechCenter, which will continue to be updated with more guidance and tools as we get closer to general availability.

Exchange Server 2007 will support coexistence with Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 2003, so you do not need to wait to implement or upgrade to these versions. However, it is important that you consider forward compatibility during your implementation or upgrade by purchasing x64 servers now so that you will be able to run Exchange Server 2007 on that hardware. Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 2003 can be installed atop 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2000 or Windows Server 2003 on x64-based hardware provided the hardware will work with 32-bit versions of Windows Server. For more info, read the Exchange team blog on this topic at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/03/13/421914.aspx.

Note: Exchange Server 2003 (like Exchange 2000 Server) is a 32-bit application that runs under the 32-bit Kernel mode, so it is not compatible with Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions (see Knowledge Base article 555468 at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555468). However, because of 32-bit capabilities of x64 processor architectures, Windows Server 2003 32-bit can be installed on capable x64 systems, thus allowing Exchange Server 2003 to be installed and run on x64-based hardware atop the 32-bit operating system.

Exchange Server 2007 is a modular system of five server roles. Server roles add flexibility to Exchange environments, simplify deployment, and improve scalability and manageability.

The five server roles in Exchange Server 2007 are:

Yes, all Exchange Server 2007 server roles—except for the Edge Transport server role or, when clustering, the Mailbox server role—can be deployed on a single physical server.

Public Folders are included and supported in Exchange Server 2007. Microsoft has communicated that future releases of Exchange Server may not include public folders. If you use Public Folders, read the Exchange Team Blog on the topic of public folders for more guidance.