Exchange 2010 SP1 Has Left The Building

by Bharat Suneja

Microsoft has just announced the release of Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1. SP1 adds some much-requested features to Exchange 2010. Here are some of the major changes (although it’s a long list of major and minor improvements, see Released: Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Beta or What’s New in Exchange 2010 SP1):

  • Online Database and Mailbox Repair: Use the New-MailboxRepairRequest and New-PublicFolderDatabaseRepairRequest cmdlets to find and fix errors in Exchange 2010 mailbox and public folder databases, without taking the database offline. You can also fix errors in an individual mailbox, without having to run integrity checks on the entire mailbox database. Yes, the ISInteg tool is history with Exchange 2010 SP1! More in Exchange 2010 SP1: Database Integrity checking on the Exchange team blog.
  • Personal Archives: Locate a user’s archive mailbox on a different mailbox database than the one where the user’s primary mailbox resides, delegate access to the archive
  • Export/Import Mailboxes: Export mailboxes to PSTs without having Microsoft Outlook installed and import PST files to a user’s primary or archive mailbox
  • Exchange ActiveSync (EAS): A number of ActiveSync device management features including management of device access rules, device quarantine alerts, and many mobile device management features are now available in the web-based Exchange Control Panel (ECP)
  • Discovery: (aka “Multi-Mailbox Search”) De-duplication of discovery search results, discovery search estimates (before copying messages returned by a search to a Discovery mailbox), and annotation of messages in search results
  • Litigation Hold: Discovery managers (users authorized to perform Discovery searches) can now place users on Litigation Hold using the ECP, EMC (in addition to using the shell, which generally limited this feature to admins)
  • Mailbox Audit Logging to log mailbox access by administrators, mailbox owners, and others who permissions to access a mailbox, including granular logging of actions such as folder and message access and deletion
  • Permissions/RBAC: RBAC role management using the ECP, support for limiting RBAC scopes to specified mailbox databases, and Active Directory split permissions model support
  • Messaging Records Management (MRM):Retention tags and retention policy management UI in the EMC, including a wizard to migrate Managed Folders (the MRM feature introduced in Exchange 2007 and still available in Exchange 2010) to Retention Tags, a default Archive and Retention Policy (a modified version of the default Archive Policy that shipped in Exchange 2010 RTM) that’s automatically applied when you provision an archive mailbox (and the user doesn’t already have a Retention Policy).
  • High Availability (HA) and Database Availability Groups (DAGs): Continuous Replication – Block Mode, improved failover performance, and Datacenter Activation Coordination (DAC) mode support for 2-member DAGs, improved DAG management in EMC
  • Information Rights Management (IRM): Protocol-level support for IRM in EAS, allowing non-Windows Phone devices to work with IRM-protected messages (this also removes the need for tethering a device to a PC and activating it for IRM), IRM logging, cross-premises IRM (between an on-premises Exchange 2010 organization and its cloud-based counterpart hosted on Exchange Online)
  • Federation: Use self-signed certificates or certificates issued by an in-house or external/commercial CA for Federation

More info and downloads:

As with all service packs and updates, it’s recommended that you read the Release Notes, and test Exchange 2010 SP1 in a non-production environment and become familiar with all the changes.

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