Top 10 features for Exchange 2010 SP1

Service Packs are always welcome in the Microsoft world. Some offer simply a collection of hotfixes and patches, along with a few new toys and enhancements. Others, like Exchange 2010 SP1, bring a long list of improvements. Here are the 10 Exchange 2010 SP1 changes I most appreciate.

1. Public Folder permissions through the EMC Public Folders may have been deprecated in Exchange 2007, but many companies still use them and plan to do so for as long as possible. Now, with SP1, you can see and configure permissions on those folders through the EMC (Exchange Management Console). This replaces the annoying method employed by the RTM version, freeing you from having to use the EMS (Exchange Management Shell) or having to work through Outlook to make permission changes.

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2. Retention Policies and Tags go GUI While Managed Folders (MRM 1.0) have been relegated to the EMS with SP1, Retention Policies (MRM 2.0) have been pulled out of the EMS and into the GUI to allow for easier MRM (Messaging Records Management). Moreover, you now have a variety of preconfigured Retention Policy Tags to get you started, as well as a couple of Retention Policies. Having this in the GUI will make it much easier for admins to make real use of MRM 2.0.

3. Deployment switch for roles and features This is a nice option you can select when performing an Exchange installation, as it removes the need to manually install these roles and features through Server Manager or to run prerequisite commands in PowerShell. I tried it during my own deployment, and it didn’t quite get me all the way through, as I had hoped. Some aspects of IIS weren’t installed, forcing me to resort to PowerShell anyway. But I’m still putting this one on my list.

4. Federation with self-signed certificates With SP1, a self-signed certificate will work for a federation trust with the Federation Gateway. Before SP1, demoing Federation (Organization Relationships and Sharing Policies) required getting not one third-party CA certificate but two to show how it worked between two domains. Now you can test this out using the self-signed cert.

5. RBAC (mostly) manageable through ECP You can now create role groups through the ECP (Exchange Control Panel) and assign roles, role assignment policies, and so forth for RBAC (Role Based Access Control). You still need to create new roles through the EMS and custom write scopes in the EMS as well, but this is one step closer to a fully functional graphical RBAC.

6. Exchange Online coexistence support This will be exciting when Exchange Online is able to work with it, but at least the Exchange 2010 SP1 side is ready.

7. New tools for Unified Messaging If you check out the Toolbox, way down at the bottom past the Performance tools, you’ll find two new tools called Call Statistics (which provides aggregated statistical information about calls forwarded to or placed by UM servers) and User Call Logs (which provides call logs for a selected user for the last 90 days). Both tools are welcome additions.

8. Personal archive provisioning to a different database This one is easy to appreciate. Your mailboxes are likely residing on expensive high-end SAN, and with the RTM version of Exchange 2010, you would have the archive sitting in the same database, ultimately on the same SAN, a deal breaker for some. Now, you can put the archive mailbox in a different database, and that database can reside on the cheapest JBOD disks you can find (if you want).

9. New-MailboxRepairRequest cmdlet This cmdlet can help with the detection and repair of mailboxes and databases that might have corruption trouble.

10. AD split permissions support Some organizations divide the group that handles Active Directory from the group that handles Exchange. There is a checkbox during the install process that allows you to automatically separate the two permissions sets for your Exchange admins and your AD admins.

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg. There are a ton of additional features that are worth reviewing, some of which may jump out as being more important in your environment than many of the ones I have listed here. If so, let us know in the comments section which SP1 features you like the most.

And if you have features you want to see in SP2, by all means add those into the comments as well. Members of the Exchange Team read the column and will see the comments, so be generous with your praise and professional in the way you offer suggestions. Who knows, you might be able to contribute to future Exchange feature sets.

This article, “Top 10 features for Exchange 2010 SP1,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of J. Peter Bruzzese’s Enterprise Windows blog and follow the latest developments in business software and Windows at InfoWorld.com.