• With the hard code driven setup (now we have just the Mailbox and Edge Transport server roles) we have fewer physical Exchange servers in the environment. This means lower costs for a variety of reasons:
  • Operational expenditures are almost always higher than the capital expenditures. It costs more to manage a server over its lifetime than it does to purchase it.
  • You purchase fewer Exchange server licenses. This architecture only requires a license for one Exchange server and one operating system, while breaking out the roles requires multiple Exchange server licenses and possibly multiple operating system licenses.
  • Deploying fewer servers has a trickle-down effect across the rest of the infrastructure. For example, deploying fewer physical servers may reduce the total rack and floor space required for the Exchange infrastructure, which in turn reduces power and cooling costs.
   

• Exchange’s unbound namespace model is load balanced across the datacenters in a layer 7 configuration that does not leverage session affinity.
• An Office Web Apps Server farm is deployed in each datacenter, with each farm having a unique namespace (bound model). Session affinity is managed by the load balancer.
• The DAG is deployed without an administrative access point.
• The commodity dual-socket (2U) server hardware platform contains up to 24 cores and up to 96GB of memory and a battery-backed write cache controller
• 12 or more large form factor drive bays within the server chassis (additional drive bays can be deployed per-server)
• Each datacenter is its own Active Directory site
• For a site resilient datacenter pair, a single namespace / protocol is deployed across both datacenters
• Load balancers are configured without session affinity, one VIP / datacenter, utilizing either round-robin or least connection (with slow start) connection management policy
• Traffic is equally distributed across both load balancers in a site resilient pair
• Each DAG is configured in an unbound model with an even number of servers, leveraging a witness in a third location.
• Active copies are distributed across all servers
• Single network for replication and client traffic
• 4 copies are deployed, two per datacenter/site.
• 4th copy is a lagged copy and the LagReplayManager is enabled by default
• Native Data protection is leveraged 

•  Large capacity 7.2K SAS disks are deployed; 4 copies per disk
• Autoreseed enables quick recovery
• Bitlocker is leveraged
• All data volumes are formatted with ReFS (see next section)

• Automated logical divergence detection - find database corruptions via DB divergence detection. It compares active and passive copies to detect logical corruption and data divergence. These kind of logical corruption could be due to:
  • Controller failures
  • Battery failures for storage caches
  • Hardware Firmware bugs
  • Transient memory corruptions
• This will ensure identical data is provided at all times for all database copies with a minimal increase in log generation (expecting ~72Mb log db/day). These are the MBDB Divergence Events that will be tracked in the application log:
  • ESE Event 538 - DBTIME_CHECK_MISMATCH_ACTIVE_DB_BEHIND_ID
  • ESE Event 539 - DBTIME_CHECK_MISMATCH_PASSIVE_DB_BEHIND_ID
  • ESE Event 540 - DB_DIVERGENCE_ID

• Loose Truncation – long-term outages out-of-space won’t dismount DB
• ReFS (Resilient File System Support) – Decrease FS corruption, reseeds and rebuilds
• Faster database failovers (due to a CLR JIT pre-compilation that now occurs on passive store worker process prior to database becoming active)
• Faster site resilience: Database copy activation suspended and Move Now
• DAG Management Service that will reduce failure domains
• Replay Lag Manager on by default with auto-play down when insufficient available copies:
  • Lagged Database Copy Enhancements in Exchange Server 2016 CU1 - Exchange Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs: https://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2016/03/03/lagged-database-copy-enhancements-in-exchange-server-2016-cu1.aspx
•  Reduced WAN costs due to the Search indexing that now uses passive copies. This will result in a ~40% reduction in network utilization in 4-copy configuration
• Last but not least for those who prefer to deploy Exchange as an Hyper-V guest we now support dynamic VHDXs:
  • Exchange 2016 virtualization: https://technet.microsoft.com/it-it/library/jj619301(v=exchg.160).aspx

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) - here we added many new options for our Customers:
  • Policy Tips available in OotW (Outlook on the Web) and not just with Outlook 2013/2016 only
  • Document Fingerprinting (a new Advanced method of content detection based on documents unique word patterns)
    • New custom sensitive information type
    • Advanced method of content detection
    • Integrates into DLP rule infrastructure
  • Updated regional DLP classification increasing from 46 to 80 total sensitive information types covering countries such as Finland, Poland, Taiwan, etc.
•  Public Folder in-place hold - it allows now to preserve Public Folder content and perform eDiscovery on it.
• eDiscovery Changes - doubled the searchable mailboxes limit to 10,000 (10K).

• Side-By-Side View  - The recipient can review both the attachment(s) and the message together (Side-by-Side). This Side-by-side view allows the attachment to be viewed/edited within the context of the message. The recipient no longer has to switch from their messaging program to another program to view the contents of the attachment.
• Edit/Reply within message - The user can edit (available soon) documents using the OOS (aka WAC) in-line to the OotW reading pane, transition to an immersive experience (full-screen WAC) or transition to the Modern Office rich clients.
• Document Collaboration - In Outlook 2016 or Outlook on the web, you can now attach a document as a link to SharePoint 2016 (currently in preview) or OneDrive for Business instead of a traditional attachment, providing the benefits of coauthoring and version control. This integration provides the ability to attach and create what are known as “Cloudy Documents”. Cloudy Documents are those documents that have been uploaded/stored in SharePoint/OneDrive where they can be shared and worked on from a central location. Integration with SharePoint also provides the ability to upload a file to SharePoint/OneDrive for greater collaboration.

• Search suggestions - try to anticipate what the user's looking for and returns results that might be what the user is looking for
• People suggestions - help a user more easily find the information they're looking for by providing contextually-aware filters
• Search refiners - help a user more easily find the information they're looking for by providing contextually-aware filters. Filters might include date ranges, related senders, and so on.
• The ability to search for events in your Calendar.

One customer from Switzerland was trying to install Exchange 2013 CU8. Everytime when he was arriving at the "Mailbox Role" step at 49% setup portion percentage he received this error:

Error:
The following error was generated when "$error.Clear();
 buildToBuildUpgrade-ExsetdataAtom -AtomName SystemAttendant -DomainController $RoleDomainController

" was run: "Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Deployment.ExsetdataException: An error occurred with error code '3221684229' and message 'Access is denied.'.
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.Task.ThrowTerminatingError(Exception exception, ErrorCategory category, Object target)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Deployment.ManageExsetdataAtom.HandleExsetdataReturnCode(UInt32 scErr)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Deployment.ManageExsetdataAtom.BuildToBuildUpgradeAtom(AtomID atomID)
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Deployment.BuildToBuildUpgradeExsetdataAtom.InternalProcessRecord()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.Task.<ProcessRecord>b__b()
   at Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.Task.InvokeRetryableFunc(String funcName, Action func, Boolean terminatePipelineIfFailed)".

The Exchange Server setup operation didn't complete. More details can be found
in ExchangeSetup.log located in the <SystemDrive>:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder.

After investigations we found out the setup was failing with the following error:

196562 [05.09.2015 17:22:31.0115] [2]  ScFindFileInDirTree (f:\15.00.1076\sources\dev\admin\src\libs\base\basemisc.cxx:1347)
196563            Error code 0XC0070005 (5): Access is denied.
196564 [05.09.2015 17:22:31.0115] [2]  ScFindFileInDirTree (f:\15.00.1076\sources\dev\admin\src\libs\base\basemisc.cxx:1347)
196565            Error code 0XC0070005 (5): Access is denied.

The issue was caused by setup program trying to access (using the with the function called ScFindFileInDirTree) to all the folders under the …\Exchange Server\V15\Mailbox directory. The account used for running Exchange setup did not have Full Control permission on the "System Volume Information" folder of the mount points.

To solve it simply:

We started Windows Explorer, folder options, view tab.
Unselected "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).
Then the "System Volume Information" folder was be visible in Windows Explorer.
We selected the "System Volume Information" folder, properties, security tab.
System Account was visible with Full Control permissions.
At this point we added the domain account used for running Exchange CU8 setup giving it the "Full Control" permissions.
We restarted the Exchange 2013 CU8 setup and it completed successfully.

Hope this help you if you have mount points on your MBX servers and you face the same issue.

Cheers,

Cri

Recently we received few calls related to the Search-MailboxAuditLog  cmdlet.

In these cases apparently, starting from the SP1/CU4, the cmdlet doesn’t give any result even if a correct syntax is used. An example here:

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Search-MailboxAuditLog -Identity Director -LogonTypes Admin,Delegate,Owner -StartDate 1/1/2015 -EndDate 02/27/2015 -showdetails

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>

This even if the Audit for the mailbox (the Director one in this case) is turned on and working fine:

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-MailboxFolderStatistics  director| where{$_.name -eq "Audits"}

RunspaceId                        : 489e26b4-4b31-4dd4-a90f-89cae401eafb

Date                              : 2/24/2015 3:27:09 PM

Name                              : Audits

FolderPath                        : /Audits

FolderId                          : LgAAAABX3lo1x302RqjskZ7cWjnPAQDImb1CL2SQRZTaOVwxP/wxAAAAAAQJAAAB

FolderType                        : Audits

ItemsInFolder                     : 10

DeletedItemsInFolder              : 0

FolderSize                        : 27.5 KB (28,160 bytes)

ItemsInFolderAndSubfolders        : 10

DeletedItemsInFolderAndSubfolders : 0

FolderAndSubfolderSize            : 27.5 KB (28,160 bytes)

[...]

SearchFolders                     :

Identity                          : director\Audits

IsValid                           : True

ObjectState                       : New

This is a known issue and a workaround where we need to check the Locale is available. Here the steps: 

1. Go to the Control panel -> Language -> "Change date, time, or number formats -> Formats (tab)
2. Change Format to English (United States) and apply.
3. Select tab "Administrative" -> Copy Settings ...
4. Check "Welcome screen and system accounts"
5. Ok all your way out. Do this on all the boxes (CAS and MBX) if you have separated roles.
6. Reboot the box or your boxes.

Hope this can help.

Regards,

Cristian