Exchange 2007 SP1 which was released in November 2007 brings together improvements for Exchange 2007 in the following areas:  Client Access Improvements, Protection & Availability improvements, Transport Improvements, Mailbox Role Improvements, and Unified Messaging Improvements.

 

 

 

An interesting fact is that unlike a traditional Service Pack Exchange 2007 SP1 is only available as a full slipstreamed package (Full install and Exchange 2007 SP1 are integrated) giving you the administrator the option to either perform a new Exchange 2007 SP1 install or an in-place upgrade from either Exchange 2007 RTM or Exchange 2007 SP1 Beta 2 (Beta 2 upgrade only if member of Exchange 2007 SP1 TAP or RDP program).

 

I hear you ask so how about the new features and improvements in Exchange 2007 SP1?

 

Protection & High Availability Improvements, in Exchange 2007 SP1 include

 

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR)

 

Exchange 2007 SP1 Standby Continuous Replication is basically an availability feature that allows an organization to recover quickly from a data center disaster. The technology works by having this Exchange 2007 SP1 Standby server which is constantly receiving log shipped mailbox data from its peer, this ensures the SCR standby partner has exactly the same mailboxes and messages that exist or existed on the original mailbox server. If there were ever a data center disaster the Exchange 2007 SP1 standby node can be activated and immediately start serving users their mailboxes.

 

Exchange 2007 SP1 improvements with Windows Server 2008

 

Exchange 2007 SP1 now allows Exchange 2007 to be installed on Windows Server 2008, giving you the following high availability features, including the new disk and file share quorum models, DHCP IPv4, Multi-subnet failover clusters and support for IPv6

 

Other improvements include transport dumpster, reporting and monitoring and Continuous replication (redundant cluster networks in a CCR environment) Improvements.

 

Another interesting fact is that Exchange 2007 SP1 can only be installed on a fresh Windows Server 2008 install, you cannot upgrade Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2007 SP1 then upgrade your operating system from say Windows 2003 server to Windows Server 2008, also you cannot upgrade your operating system to Windows Server 2008 then upgrade from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2007 SP1.  

 

Mailbox Role Improvements in Exchange 2007 SP1 include

 

Mailbox Management

 

Import and export of mailboxes into and out of PST files

 

Previously when wanting to either import or export mailboxes into and out of PST files you either needed to make use of Microsoft Outlook or Exchange Exmerge tool, with Exchange 2007 SP1 Mailboxes can be imported into and out of PSTs via the use of the new Export-Mailbox and Import-Mailbox Management Shell Cmdlets.

 

Mailbox management

 

Some of new features found in Exchange 2007 SP1 include both the Manage Send-As and Manage full access permissions wizard allowing and administrator to grant or remove Send As or Full Access permissions on a mailbox.

 

Another Mailbox management feature that administrators will appreciate is the ability for mailboxes to be created in bulk for existing user accounts.

 

Public Folder Features

 

Public folder Referrals can now be maintained from within the Exchange Management console, the new public folder administrator role which is used for administering public folders and can be granted to a user or group.

 

Improvements in Monitoring of Online Defragmentation include two ESE performance counters to monitor online defragmentation effectiveness and efficiency, and additional information for Event 307.

 

Client Access Improvements

 

Client access feature improvements in Exchange 2007 SP1 include Exchange ActiveSync, Outlook web access light, Outlook Web access premium and POP and IMAP 4 Improvements.

 

In the area of Outlook Web Access Light, user’s sessions are monitored so that during a long message composition the user’s session does not time out.

 

With the Outlook Web Access Premium client users can now create and edit personal distribution lists and server side rules, access to the dumpster, viewing of some Office 2007 file formats via WebReady, A new Monthly Calendar View, Move and copy commands, Public folders supported thru the /owa virtual directory, S/MIME support added, and some customization features.

 

For IMAP/POP various settings such as port, authentication, connection and messages settings can be changed.

 

Transport Improvements

 

Exchange 2007 SP1 delivers transport improvements in the Edge Transport server and Hub transport Server roles and some additional core transport enhancements.

 

Core Transport enhancements include back pressure monitoring that allows the system to better handle systems that are under high resource use. Also now more transport settings can be configured from the Exchange Management console.

 

Edge Transport improvements in Exchange 2007 SP1 include, the Star-EdgeSynchronization and Test-EdgeSynchronization cmdlets to kick off ADAM edge synchronization from a remote PC, and check the synchronization results for individual users

 

Hub Transport improvements in Exchange 2007 SP1 include priority queuing where the priority assigned to a message by a user is used by the Hub Transport server when categorizing a message.  Transport rules can now be applied to unified messaging messages.

 

The new MaxMessageSize parameter can be found on the Set-AdSiteLink, New-RoutingGroupConnector and Set-RoutingGroupConnector cmdlet allows an administrator to limit the size of a message that is relayed between Active Directory sites (Set-AdSiteLink) and restored the size of messages relayed between Exchange 2007 HTS server and Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 bridgehead servers (New-RoutingGroupConnector and Set-RoutingGroupConnector cmdlets).

 

Unified Messaging

 

The most notable Unified Messaging improvements found with the introduction of Exchange 2007 SP1 include, access to Outlook Voice Access via Office Communicator without the need for a pin number, Subjects and priorities can now be assigned to voice messages, Integration of missed calls notification email messages in Office communicator 2007, along with Quality of Service (QOS) support, and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol support.

 

As you can see Exchange 2007 SP1 is an extreamly feature rich update, there should be something in it for everyone, and it is an update that should not be taken lightly, testing an planning are the keywords here, because of the complex nature of Exchange 2007 and this service pack planning is essential before even thinking of letting Exchange 2007 SP1 loose on your production environment.