Tackle Email Overload and Share Administrative Roles with Exchange Server 2010
Exchange 2007 expanded your communications abilities, joining up email, fax and voice. Exchange Server 2010 improves on most of these, with simpler administration and ways to manage email overload.
The big push for Exchange 2010 however, the reason almost 10 million people in small and mid-market companies have tested the beta? It's the new Archival feature.
The Archival Feature: Add Automatic Backup to Your Inbox
Alice the VP is panicking. Her company has been subpoenaed to assist in a legal investigation. They need to produce a batch of communications records between their employees and a former supplier.
The reason she's panicking? Those records were emails – and they don't have them anymore. Her employees deleted those months ago.
Federal law requires every business to keep communications records, in case a lawsuit is filed relevant to them.
This includes emails. Your company can be fined if you must produce email records…and you don't have any left.
In the past, archiving emails was the job of third-party archival services. But these services are expensive; smaller businesses couldn't always justify the cost.
Now, Exchange Server 2010 has the
Archival feature. With Archival, all emails are archived out of your account, into a store on the Exchange server, after a certain period of time.
Say there's an email from last month in your inbox. With Exchange 2010, that email is just a 'shell' now. The actual email is in the archive. If you click the email you'll see a 'preview' of the message, and a notice if there was an attachment. Want to retrieve the message? Click "Retrieve" and the full email pops up!
Archival also saves disk space on everyone's computers, and Outlook 2007 runs faster. You can set how big you want each mailbox to get (say 1 GB). Everything above that is archived automatically.
More Advantages of Exchange 2010
- New adaptations that make it easier to run Exchange 2010 as a hosted service (see our Exchange 2010 Hosting page).
- Integrated Conversation View: Turns a series of emails into one collected thread in your Inbox. Instead of each separate email cramming the Inbox full.
- Replace your existing voicemail with Exchange-based Unified Messaging! Text preview of voicemails, phone-based access to email/calendar/contacts via Outlook Voice Access, etc.
- New High Availability and Disaster Recovery management capabilities.
- Centerpiece of Unified Communications, along with OCS 2007 and SharePoint – 1 platform providing voice, instant messaging, archiving, conferencing, voicemail & collaboration.
- Seamless inter-operation with Office Communications Server 2007 and the upcoming OCS 2010, spreading communications abilities (voice, conferencing, IM) into Outlook and mobile access.
- Role-based administration: Designate certain users as responsible for specific tasks, so you don't have to do them all. Examples: Help Desk Staff (manage mailbox quotas); Human Resources (update employee info in company directory).
- Live Mailbox Move: Move users from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 without waiting for Saturday. 2010's Mailbox move is done live – while the server's still up and your users are still working!
Reference Links
Exchange Server 2010 – Microsoft.com Exchange 2010 FAQ – Microsoft.com Move Public Folder Content from one Public Folder Database to Another Public Folder Database Moving Mailboxes from Exchange 2007 Servers to Exchange 2010 Servers Planning Roadmap for Upgrade and Coexistence - Exchange 2007 Exchange Server 2010 System Requirements
- x64 architecture-based computer with Intel processor that supports Intel 64 architecture, OR AMD processor that supports the AMD64 platform
- Minimum 4 GB RAM per server (1 GB per core); maximum 16 GB RAM per server.
Exceptions:
- Unified Messaging, max 8 GB per server.
- Mailbox & multiple-role server should have between 8 GB – 64 GB of RAM.
- Disk space requirements:
- At least 1.2 GB disk space (for install)
- Additional 500 MB disk space for each Unified Messaging (UM) language pack installed
- 200 MB of disk space on the system drive
- Hard drive to store the message queue database on an Edge Transport/Hub Transport server with at least 500 MB of space
- 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008, versions: Standard Service Pack 2, Enterprise Service Pack 2, Standard R2, Enterprise R2
(Don't have a server that meets these requirements? Consider a
hosted option.)
Want to see Archival in action? PlanetMagpie now offers
on-site Exchange 2010 Demos for potential clients. Call us 408-341-8770 to schedule a free demo.