Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Part G

This is the 7th and last installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills with the same name.  The offline address book is an address database that is downloaded and stored locally. For most jobs you will search for addresses with a query or following certain criteria ie all the addresses in London. This following criteria and filtering we often call rules. You can replicate mailbox data from one server to another up to a maximum of 16 with in Exchange Server and we call these mailbox servers. If one mailbox server goes down it is simple for another one to take and only one will be active with the others passive at any one time. Data is written from the active server to each of the passive ones and they are kept updated. This is called database availability groups. Microsoft tried to force businesses to buy Sharepoint Server in addition to Exchange Server and it is very costly, by stopping having public folders in the latter and only in the former. There was a public outcry from particularly small businesses who would also have to train their staff to use Sharepoint and Microsoft backed down. Starting in Exchange Server 2007 SP1 public folders have become even more of a major feature with them having a different file type but residing in the same database as other information avoiding the need for replication that was common in earlier versions. Since the 2013 version you have to have to have a mailbox with in the program to access public folders. A high availability server which is by definition one that is up 99.999% of the time equating to 5 1/2 minutes of downtime per year which isn’t even as long as the time needed to power up a server. This is mainly achieved by having several servers with back with at least some ready to take over at a moments notice and of course lots of replication and updating. Some companies like Amazon which stand to lose a lot of money if there is a power outage even have generators ready to keep everything on line. I’ll try and start a new series of blog post software tutorials tonight. I noticed I did say Exchange handled Instant Messaging in an earlier post and it’s actually Microsoft Lync Server 2013 which does that.