The ATE FAQ
My experience working at the Ask The Experts (ATE) booth allowed me to build a small list of frequently asked question (FAQ), which I called "The ATE FAQ". Statistically it's obvious that my sampling isn't representative of the universe of the Exchange users and administrators, but at least I have an excuse to write about some exciting topics.
1. New SP2 features: There isn't enough space in this post to write about all the new SP2 features, but I would like to point out Direct Push, Remote Wipe, anti-spam capabilities, the increase of the storage limit of the standard edition to 75 GB and, as I'm Portuguese, Iberian and Brazilian Portuguese spelling checker for OWA. For further information, here are some additional links:
• Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 is Coming!
• Frequently Asked Questions About Exchange Server 2003 SP2
• New Mobility Features in Exchange Server 2003 SP2
• Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Remote Wipe functionality
• Enforcing security settings on mobile devices with Exchange 2003 SP2
• Solving the Phone Synchronization Problem End-to-End
• Exchange 2003 SP2
• Storage limit changing in Exchange 2003 SP2 Standard
2. Exchange 12: there is some curiosity about the next version of Exchange, scheduled to be released at late 2006, early 2007. Besides including the new functionalities of the upcoming SP2, Exchange 12 will add:
• 64-bit support
• Log shipping
• Continuous backup
• Unified messaging
• Server role setup
• Improved search
• Monad, new command line interface
• Shared SharePoint documents from OWA
3. Public Folders support: although Microsoft has announced that it will discontinue Public Folders, that will only happen in the version to be release after Exchange 12. So we still have 6/7 years to start thinking in migrating to SharePoint
4. Stretched Clusters: I registered very interest for geographic dispersed clusters (some hundred kilometers), probably due to disaster recovery concerns. Microsoft supports stretched cluster as long as you follow some requisites, such as using hardware listed on the Windows Server Catalog. Here is a small list of links about this subject:
• Deployment Guidelines for Exchange Server Multi-Site Data Replication
• Cluster Solutions, Geographically Dispersed Cluster Solution
• Multi-site data replication support for Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2000
• Multi-site Data Replication For Exchange Server 2003
These were the trendy topics during the time I spent at the ATE. If you would like to add another ones, feel free to drop a comment.