Beyond Messaging

New Certificate Management Features in Exchange 2010

Here is an interesting blog post about the new certificate management features in the Exchange 2010 release candidate.

Amazon Cloud Includes Enhanced Security, Truly Virtual Servers

Amazon has released it's Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. It features additional security features. Customers can specify IP address ranges for access, creating a private cloud network. Since companies are chomping at the bit for access to cheaper computing platforms and ability to use Cloud Computing for backups and cheaper software licensing, I predict many will evaluate the new Amazon solution.

via www.informationweek.com

Amazon said customers will be able to use their existing security services and firewalls for their private clouds. Amazon VPC will have no long-term contracts, requires "minimum" upfront investments, and customers will only pay for the resources they use, Amazon said in a statement.

So what's available on the service?  To start with it seems mostly geared toward IT groups who want to set up servers.

Here's a list from Amazon of their software "menu."  Truly virtual servers, here we come.

_________

Operating Systems

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) are preconfigured with an ever-growing list of operating systems. We work with our partners and community to provide you with the most choice possible. You are also empowered to use our bundling tools to upload your own operating systems. The operating systems currently available to use with your Amazon EC2 instances include:

Operating Systems
Red Hat Enterprise Linux	Windows Server 2003
OpenSolaris	openSUSE Linux
Fedora	Gentoo Linux

Oracle Enterprise Linux

Ubuntu Linux

Debian

Software

Amazon EC2 enables our partners and customers to build and customize Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with software based on your needs. We have hundreds of free and paid AMIs available for you to use. A small sampling of the software available for use today within Amazon EC2 includes:

Databases	Batch Processing
IBM DB2	Hadoop
IBM Informix Dynamic Server	Condor
Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2005	Open MPI
MySQL Enterprise
Oracle 11g

Web Hosting

Apache HTTP

IIS/Asp.Net

IBM Lotus Web Content Management

IBM WebSphere Portal Server

Application Development Environments
IBM sMash
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
Ruby on Rails Application Servers IBM WebSphere Application Server Java Application Server Oracle WebLogic Server Video Encoding & Streaming Wowza Media Server Pro Windows Media Server

Video: High Availability in Microsoft Exchange 2010

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a good video is priceless.  Here is a series of four videos from the MS Exchange Team covering High Availability in Exchange 2010.  I think the database availability group (DAG)features in 2010 are going to be very important as we find companies looking for cost effective ways to achieve increased reliability.

The four videos cover:

1. Database Mobility, Incremental Deployment, Database Availability Groups, Mailbox Database Copies
2. Creating a database availability group (DAG) and adding two Mailbox servers to the DAG.
3. Creating a mailbox database copy and monitor the health and status of the copy.
4. Performing a database switchover using the Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell. Also demonstrating the Outlook Web Access experience during a database switchover using Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Snow Leopard Now Has Native Support For Exchange

MacWorld has a slideshow of some of the more subtle new features in Snow Leopard.  Of course from a messaging administrator's point of view one of the biggest new features in the new Mac OS is native support for access to Exchange accounts. 

But as for the smaller changes, sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words, right?  So MacWorld's slideshow is a nice way to get a glimpse of the new OS without having to wade through a bunch of description.

Exchange 2007 SP2 is a Gateway to Upgrade to 2010

Like a "gateway drug" Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 will get you on the road to stronger stuff available with Exchange 2012. Let's have a little roundup of some news and information about the new service pack.

First, the What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2 page is now online.  (It wasn't working the other day for some reason)  Here are some of the highlights. 

• Once all of the Client Access servers in your organization have been upgraded to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) you can deploy Exchange Server 2010 in your organization.

• Now has support for Windows Server Backup to back up and restore your Exchange 2007 SP2 databases.

• Enhanced Auditing features.

• Dynamic AD schema update and validation feature helps avoid conflicts when new schema are added.

• Better public folder quota management.

• New "cmdlet parameters" to help centralized administration of Exchange organization settings

Technet's Reasons to upgrade to Exchange Server 2007 SP2 also lists this tidbit:

For the administrator, Exchange Server 2007 SP2 provides advanced protection options against e-mail security threats, such as spam and viruses, as well as the tools to help manage internal compliance and high availability needs.

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 Released

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 is available for download from Microsoft today. 

According to the Release Notes you should upgrade your servers in the following order:

1. Client Access servers
   
   
2. Unified Messaging servers
   
   
3. Hub Transport servers
   
   
4. Edge Transport servers
   
   
5. Mailbox servers

Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG, & Microsoft Collaborate via IEEE-SA.

The IEEE has formed a new Industry Security Collaboration Group - IEEE-SA. The purpose of the new venture is to "standardize and stimulate collaboration between security researchers." They have already gathered together five major players in the sector, including: Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG Technologies and Microsoft. Channelweb.com article about the IEEE-SA.

The Industry Connections Security Group (ICSG) has the stated purpose of  "working on a new standard for communication and collaboration among security researchers and vendors."

Tech tip: If you are receiving an error with Symantec Service Framework, you may need to uninstall and reinstall the product.  More about about a Symanctec Service Framework error.

Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, or... Google Apps

There's a third gorilla in play in the email space - more organizations, some quite large are dumping their infrastructure heavy traditional email client/servers and migrating to Google Apps.  Google Apps are enterprise ready, secure, and cost effective. 

The Gmail client is ubiquitous, with usability, large mailbox size support, and great searchability.  Using the software as a service (SaaS) model, you can cut down on administration and support costs by moving into cloud computing.

One of the big Google Apps partners, CloudSherpas, recently hosted an event called Leaving Lotus.  Click on the link to get access to their takaway presentations, including a migration guide Migrating from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps.

Here is an article from the Google Enterprise blog that focuses on migrating from Exchange to Google Apps. Choosing Google Apps over Microsoft Exchange. 

Should Lotus Have a Free Email Client

I spent a few minutes at the "Lotus Knows" campaign today - here is an idea I voted yes to.  Microsoft and Google give away an email client for free.  Should Lotus give away a free version of the Notes client?

IBM Marketing Lotus Products with Lotus Knows Campaign & Idea Jam

After years of letting the great software from Lotus languish under poor marketing, IBM finally has woken up and decided to put some crowd sourcing buzz behind Lotus.  Their new campaign is going viral with a twitter hashtag of #lotusknows.  They also have a 72 hour Idea Jam site up where the community can make suggestions - tell IBM what you think.

My contribution - "Lotus Knows I need a job!"  (Ok, just interjecting a little humor into the equation.)  I personally am afraid this may be a case of too little too late, but one can hope that this will spark more interest in the IBM offerings.  Just because Microsoft is the biggest gorilla on the block does not mean its products are the best.  At any rate, I believe in being vendor independent and can admin Domino, Exchange, Blackberry, iPhone, and whatever else you throw my way.