Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 Administration Guide: Administer and Manage End-to-End Enterprise Messaging, Business Communication, and Team Collaboration (English Edition)

By Edward van Biljon

Prepare your environment so you can introduce Exchange Server 2019 or build a new environment from scratch and learn along the way.

This guide will help the readers how to deploy Exchange 2019 and perform all the post administrative tasks like creating a certificate request that you can submit to an external source and completing this setup. You will learn how to configure your virtual directories to match the name on your certificate. You will also learn how to build your first Database Availability Group (DAG) or extend the Database Availability Groups in your environment to ensure you have high availability. You will learn how to perform mailbox moves from your existing Exchange environment or simply create new mailboxes for your users. You can do all your tasks using the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) and learn about the new features of Exchange 2019 and the next version of Exchange.

In this administration guide, you will learn about Exchange 2019, what is new, and what has been removed. You will learn how to deploy Exchange 2019, configure it and understand what is required to run in coexistence with Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2016. Lastly, you will learn how to work with the Exchange Management Shell compared to the Exchange Admin Center.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BPB Online LLP
• Release date: Apr 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9789390684564

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Exchange 2019

Welcome to the Exchange 2019 Administration Guide . Chapter 1 will explain how you can add Exchange 2019 to your environment if this is a new forest and cover coexistence scenarios and what it supports.

There are a number of new features in Exchange 2019 like MCDB, Autoreseed, and MAPI (Like Exchange 2016).

We will also chat about Exchange 2019 CU's and how they are different from the normal Exchange 2016 CU's.

Finally, we will look at how to secure your Exchange 2019 Server using Windows 2019 Server Core, which is now supported.

Structure

These are the topics covered in this chapter:

Introduction to Exchange Server 2019

Changes in Exchange 2019 compared to Exchange 2016

Domain requirements

Coexistence

Prerequisites

MCDB (Meta Cache Database)

Autoreseed and how it works

The .NET Framework

MAPI

Exchange 2019 CU's and why there is a change in downloads

Windows Server 2019 Core and Exchange Server 2019

Hybrid

Objectives

Exchange 2019 is by far the most advanced email system. With all the new features, you will learn how to get your environment ready for Exchange 2019 and what limitations you face if you are running Exchange 2010. You will understand why you can't download the Exchange 2019 Cumulative Updates like Exchange 2016.

Let's start with the first section.

Introduction to Exchange 2019

Welcome to Chapter 1, where you will get a brief, high-level understanding of Exchange 2019.

Like Exchange 2016, Exchange 2019 is an on-premise email server that allows your organization to send/receive emails from the internet and internal to your network.

Exchange Server 2019 is one of the best versions, I would say because it has come a long way, has had some major improvements, and supports new items like Windows Server 2019 Core.

Exchange Server 2019, like its predecessor, Exchange Server 2016, gives you the same scalable options, high availability, and the ability to import PST files by placing them in a folder and letting Exchange Server 2019 handle it for you.

Exchange 2019 is currently the highest on-premise version you can go to, but you cannot, unfortunately, migrate straight from Exchange 2010, which we will cover in the coexistence sections.

Exchange Server 2019 RTM was released on October 22, 2018.

Comparing Exchange 2019 with Exchange 2016

There have been quite a few changes in Exchange 2019 compared to Exchange 2016, and these include:

Security

Performance

Clients

Messaging policies and compliance improvements

In-place Archiving, retention, and eDiscovery improvements

Let's unpack each of these in a bit more detail. The first topic is security; now you may be wondering what they have done now? Well, they introduced Windows Server 2019 Core support, which means you can now install Exchange Server 2019 on Windows Server 2019 Core. This is covered in more detail at the end of the chapter.

You can now block external access to the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) and the EMS (Exchange Management Shell). Microsoft has allowed you to use Client Access Rules to manage/administer Exchange from the internal network vs. using firewalls.

TLS 1.2 is the only version that is enabled by default in Exchange Server 2019. This has been done to improve the security of client and server connections.

The next big change in Exchange Server 2019 is performance, where Microsoft has made the following changes:

Search performance has been improved as it allows for the indexing of large files. The search infrastructure has been improved overall. The ability for cloud-scale as search has been rebuilt.

Because of changes to the search architecture, they say that there are more stable failovers between servers.

Metacache database – We will cover this in more detail later on in the chapter.

Hardware – Exchange can now scale to 256GB of RAM and up to 48 CPU cores. This is a major improvement from Exchange 2016. Imagine how powerful and fast this machine will be, especially if it runs on Windows Server 2019 Core.

Last but not least, there is a new feature called dynamic database cache.

The last bit is clients. I am sure many are going to like what they see below for the improvements in mail clients:

The new option for calendaring – Do Not Forward allows you to enable this option where attendees cannot forward the meeting invites to anyone else; only the organizer can forward meeting invites.

Out of office improvements – Additional features/options have been made available, such as adding an event to your calendar to show you as away and the ability to decline meetings that take place when you are away.

Domain requirements

Each version of Exchange Server has a set of requirements that need to be adhered to; we will cover each of the following topics below:

Domain Controllers

Active Directory Forest Functional Level

Active Directory Site

DNS

IPv6

The following is the list of Domain Controllers that can be in the forest running the version of Windows Server; this is Standard or Datacenter:

Windows Server 2012 R2 – Take note; this is the lowest one

Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2019

The next component is the Active Directory Forest Functional Level, and this has to be on a minimum of Windows Server 2012 R2 or higher. Note that you will not be able to raise it if you have legacy domain controllers; hence you need to make sure you follow the