News from Tech-Ed 2004 Tuesday - Part 2

Introduced today was the Best Practices Analyzer for SQL Server.  This is interesting to Exchange Admins because next is the Best Practices Analyzer for Exchange 2003.  This tool swill take a look at your environment and make recommendations based on what it finds.  Also, if there is a configuration that is wrong in Windows that affects Exchange, we will let you know.

There was a demo of ISA server which had a wizard for setting up RPC/HTTPS for Outlook 2003.  Also they set up a Virtual pipe between sites instead of using leased lines.  Microsoft saved 3 Million dollars by do this recently.

Exchange 2003 allowed us to reduce our servers from 114 mailbox server to 38.

We are making it so that you have a single way to deploy patches across all Microsoft applications.  So soon you can update your Exchange servers and all Microsoft products the same way you update Windows automatically.

At least 66% of all e-mail is spam.  The Exchange Intelligent Message Filter released free today and allows you to move the filters from the client to the server.  This blocks around 90% of all spam.  Spoofing would allow mail to go into the in-box instead of the junk mail.  There is nothing in normal SMTP specs that prevents spoofing.  Caller-ID allows you to check the IP address of the sending server and prevent the mail to even get into the server if the server is not the correctly published outgoing email server for the domain of the spoofed address.  This will be in the Exchange Edge Services.

The demo showed that spoofed email wouldn't even get through.  The external mail servers for a domain will be published as a XML blob in DNS.

SMS 2003 = Ability to download all the updates and target just the machines that need that update.
MOM 2005 console is new and servers will provide an alert if there are problems.  If the problem occurs the client will try to tell you why it occurred.

Future updates can be rolled back by using the /u parameter. 

Free for all Tech-Ed 2004 Attendees:
SMS 2003
MOM 2005 Express
Services for Unix

How to get information workers to use Extranet sites - SharePoint Services allows you to self-provision these.  With WSS you can manage how much space can be used for each self-provisioned site.  You can also manage sites that haven't been used for a while and remove them after contacting owners.

Active Directory Federation Services allows you to exchange public keys with other organizations and add them to your AD and then collaborate using SharePoint.

Email and Information on any device.  Device management Feature Pack prevents rogue devices on your network.  
We can push the configuration of Outlook so that users can use RPPC/HTTP through policies. 

In the future if an external client gets a link to something in the Intranet administrators could securely provision access to those locations in the Extranet.  This allows you to not only share email but Terminal services and file shares without creating a VPN access - ANYWHERE Access

DSI - Dynamic Systems Initiative - Windows Systems Center ("Indy").
Allows you to model rollouts based on industries.  This demo showed the Exchange wizard.  First you fill in the information or get it from MOM and SMS. Then it will tell you what is the recommended topology.  Then it will simulate the performance to see if we are in range.  It will even simulate latency reports for users.  It can tell you what is it going to be like to send email from one site to another under medium load. This is a glimpse of the power that will be in the DSI.

Roadmap

NOW (2004)
Windows 2003 SP1
Biztalk 2004
HIS 2004
ISA 2004
MOM 2005
Windows Update
Systems Center 2005
Virtual Server 2005

Yukon (2005)
Windows 2003 Server Release 2
Visual Studio 2005
SQL 2005
Biztalk
HIS
Commerce Server
Exchange Edge Services

Longhorn Wave
Longhorn Stuff...