Microsoft Exchange 2019: Features and Requirements

Microsoft Exchange is a professional email and communication solution. groupware for businesses that centralizes functions like messaging, calendar, contact directory and tasks. Exchange Server enables secure and efficient communication and collaboration.

The main features of Exchange 2019

Many changes to Exchange Server 2019 have taken place in the background and are therefore not directly noticeable to users. Other changes, on the other hand, directly modify the workflow of employees whose companies use Microsoft Exchange Server 2019. Finally, some features are also interesting for administrators.

Meta Cache Database (MCDB)

If you have your own (physical) server and equip it with SSD drives, you can use the Meta Cache Database (MCDB) under Exchange 2019. It is already used in Office 365. With this method, the meta information are stored around messaging (for example, with the folder structure), which helps speed up access and searching, and gives administrators the ability to accommodate more users in a single server instance. This at the same time allows costs to be reduced.

Dynamic Database Cache (DDC)

Dynamic Database Cache (DDC) also makes Exchange Server faster. Administrators specify how much storage space a database can occupy on an Exchange server. However, the number of active databases changes, and the available storage remains unused, which is not optimal. With Exchange 2019, DDC allows allocated storage capacity to dynamically adapt to the situation.

Search index

Microsoft has completely redesigned the search index in Exchange 2019. In previous versions, the index was separate from the inbox database. But this is no longer necessary in the new version of Exchange Server. The search index is now located directly into the inbox database. This makes administration much less complicated and allows for faster searching.

Windows Server Core

Microsoft offers administrators a minimal server system runtime with Windows Server Core. Previously, it could not be combined with an Exchange server. Exchange 2019 now offers this option. Since Server Core is much simpler than the standard version, it saves a lot of configuration work and eliminates unnecessary services that consume resources. In addition to saving time, Windows Server Core also promises more security : the simple structure reduces the number of points of attack for hackers and avoids certain errors for administrators (in terms of security).

Calendar extensions

Exchange 2019 also offers new user-friendly features. They are mainly focused on the calendar. With the “ Do Not Forward « , for example, you can create a meeting invitation that users will not be able to forward. This allows the event creator to maintain control over who can attend the meeting. Additionally, Exchange Server 2019 gives users more options to manage their absences : If you are out of the office for a certain period of time, you can block your calendar for that period. Meeting requests are then automatically rejected.

Another new feature for the calendar which is mainly aimed at administrators: they now have a cmdlet advanced completely new (command-let). This new command allows administrators to delete calendar events (such as meetings). Previously, the problem was that events created by employees who were no longer with the company still continued to exist in other employees' calendars. Administrators can now use Remove-CalendarEvents to delete calendar entries. An extension has also been added to the cmdlet: Add-FolderPermissions. PowerShell now allows administrators to assign permissions to define a replacement.

E-Mail Address Internationalization (EAI)

Also interesting for end users: Email Address Internationalization (EAI) which helps reduce problems when sending emails in a global context. Users are no longer limited to limited ASCII code (based on the English alphabet). Instead, UTF-8 can be used. To achieve this, addresses from previous versions of Exchange had to be converted. This is now no longer necessary. With Exchange 2019, the EAI allows the use of email addresses with international characters.

Remote functionality with Exchange 2019: unified messaging

For some companies, this is probably a small problem: as of Exchange Server 2019, Microsoft no longer continues the Unified Messaging (UM) service. unified messaging). In previous versions, the service offered many voicemail functions. If you need these functions, it will be necessary to go through another service. Microsoft itself is abandoning UM in favor of Cloud Voicemail. The latter is provided by Microsoft Teams and is part of Microsoft 365, Microsoft's SaaS solution.

Exchange 2019 improvements

In addition to the new features more or less visible to the user, Microsoft has introduced some substantive improvements in Exchange Server 2019. These are mainly improvements on security and performance. For better protection against hackers, Microsoft especially offers the option of using Exchange with Windows Server Core (as detailed earlier in this article). At the same time, the new version also relies on stricter rules: with the transition to Exchange 2019, only the TLS protocol from version 1.2 will be supported. All previous versions are no longer secure and are therefore no longer supported by Exchange. Microsoft thus forces administrators to use more secure versions.

In addition, the new Exchange version offers administrators other options to limit access to the server configuration area (Admin Center & PowerShell) using the Client Access Rules. From now on, administrators can, for example, only allow certain IP addresses and thus block access from outside directly through the server without the need for an additional firewall.

In addition, Exchange Server convinces with even more impressive performance. The main innovations (MCDB, DDC and modification of the search index) have been explained above. But Exchange Server 2019 contains even more improvements: by moving from Workstation Garbage Collection (GC) to GC Server, the available performance can be better distributed. The GC server processes more requests per second than the Workstation version. However, this only brings efficiency gains if multiple processor cores are used. This is why, until 48 cores can be used in parallel in Exchange 2019.

As the Exchange 2019 changes also focus on memory improvements, Microsoft is providing better support for using hardware in this context. In addition to the usual HDDs, you can now use the SSD memory of your Exchange Server, in combination with traditional hard drives. A total of 256 GB of working memory is now available.

Terms for Exchange 2019

With this version of Exchange, new requirements also appear for the server environment. The hardware requirements of Exchange 2019 are particularly important so that the new version can be used without problems:

• Processor : 64-bit Intel or AMD processors
• Working memory : 128 GB for messaging and 64 GB for Edge Transport
• Hard disk space : 20 GB for installation, 200 MB of free space on the system disk and 500 MB of free space on the disk with the Message Queue Database

Information published by Microsoft regarding minimum memory requirements have given rise to uncertainties in particular among administrators, because they are relatively high. For the manufacturer, it is necessary to have at least 128 GB of memory to obtain the best performance. However, it is still possible to implement Exchange 2019 even with smaller amounts of memory.

Also interesting: the software required. To use Exchange 2019, you need Windows Server 2019 or later. For most businesses, this means upgrades are necessary. Administrative tools are also designed for Windows 10. As the framework Exchange 2019 requires version 4.7.2, users can access Exchange Server with Outlook from version 2013.