Image: PhotoGranary/Adobe Stock When it came out, Exchange Server 2013 eliminated a lot of deployment intricacy. It might scale from a single server to the countless mail boxes in Office 365.
It also had much better administration tools, consisting of public folder and mobile device management, better accessibility with automatic failover, Outlook web access that was nearly identical from desktop Outlook, and a hybrid option that let you begin moving mailboxes to the cloud without quiting all your on properties servers.
With the latest updates, Exchange Server supports Windows Extended Defense, which improves Windows authentication procedures to secure against authentication relay or guy in the middle attacks.
Why should you update to Exchange Server 2019?
But even if you depend on date on security patches, you still require to plan to move off of Exchange Server 2013 in the next few months. After April 11, 2023, it won’t be getting bug repairs, security spots, technical assistance or time zone updates– and nations and states make last minute changes to their daytime savings schedule more frequently than you may expect.
An Exchange server contains some of a company’s most delicate corporate data, along with a business address book that would work to assailants attempting to deceive staff members with phishing or business email compromise. Thinking about how rapidly most companies would grind to a halt without e-mail and shared calendars for meetings, security and support are important.
If you’re still running your own Exchange server instead of utilizing Microsoft 365, it’s generally because of regulatory requirements or severe confidentiality concerns, which makes it even more important to remain in assistance.
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What’s included in Exchange Server 2019?
Although it was initially planned for this year, the next version of Exchange Server will not be offered till the second half of 2025. If you were waiting on that, upgrade to Exchange Server 2019 instead; you do not need to install Exchange Server 2016 first.
There are security enhancements: Customer connections utilize TLS 1.2, and soon TLS 1.3, by default, and you can disable legacy authentication, which is susceptible to interception and strength attacks. Moreover, Outlook uses MAPI over HTTP as the default connection to Exchange, which provides users a more stable and reliable connection; although, you need to allow that in Exchange 2013 before setting up Exchange 2019. There are improvements to the compliance and information loss prevention includes too, and calendar meetings that require to remain confidential can be set to Do Not Forward.
Plus, Exchange search has actually been entirely reconstructed: It’s based upon the Exchange Online search infrastructure and can index much bigger files with much better search performance.
Transferring To Exchange Server 2019
Although it’s often possible to do an in-place upgrade of Exchange, it’s not supported. And if you’re moving from Exchange 2013, it’s unlikely your servers will meet the Exchange 2019 hardware requirements. Offered just how much more effective central processing units have become over the last decade, you will likely have the ability to support the very same variety of mailboxes with less servers.
Must-read security coverage
You’ll need to run Windows Server 2019 or Windows Server 2022, but you can run Exchange 2019 on Windows Server Core to minimize the patching surface area. You can keep your Active Directory site forest functional level at Windows Server 2012 R2 for the migration, though you may want to enhance efficiency by updating that later.
With more effective CPUs in servers, Exchange 2019 doesn’t require an architecture that divides up jobs for performance. Instead, it’s optimized to make the most of the hardware you have and for failure seclusion.
That’s why there are now only 2 server roles. Mailbox includes client access services like authentication, redirection and proxying, which had their own function in Exchange 2013, along with the transport service and mailbox databases. And Edge Transport, which is deployed beyond your Active Directory forest to deal with internet-facing mail circulation, decreases the attack surface area of your Exchange server as well as adds another layer of defense against malware.
Updating needs updates and complications to keep all services
It may seem weird to upgrade Exchange 2013 so you can establish Exchange 2019, however you’ll need to be on one of the two newest cumulative updates for Exchange 2013 to be in assistance and for it to exist together with Exchange 2019 while you overcome the upgrade. If you have Exchange 2013 Customer Gain access to servers, you can proxy traffic from them to Exchange 2019 mailboxes, which offers you more versatility.
One Exchange 2013 function you don’t get in Exchange 2019 is Unified Messaging, which puts voicemail in the Outlook inbox. If you’re not all set to switch to Teams rather, you’ll need to set up Skype for Service Server 2019 and use the Microsoft Cloud Voicemail service. If you have actually been utilizing Exchange 2013 Unified Messaging with your personal branch exchange, that’s more complex to get working with Skype for Business Server, and you might want to consider Microsoft Teams Phone and cloud PBX rather.
You’ll likewise require to examine which variation of Outlook your users are on. Exchange 2019 doesn’t support anything older than Outlook 2013, so if you still have Outlook 2010, you’ll require to upgrade that too.
Use the Exchange Release Assistant to get a detailed prepare for moving from Exchange 2013 to 2019. It will stroll you through the entire process from Active Directory site schema updates and Domain Call System settings to setting up Exchange, moving mailboxes and public folders, and eliminating any unnecessary approvals as soon as you’re done.
Image: Mary Branscombe. Use the Exchange Release Assistant to get a custom migration prepare for your environment. Tips for decommissioning Exchange 2013 Once you have Exchange 2019 up and running, you can decommission your Exchange 2013 servers. There’s an useful list of the actions to follow here, consisting of: Inventorying applications, customers and Autodiscover connections and making certain they’re set up for the
- new Exchange server Getting a brand-new Secure Sockets Layer certificate if the namespace has actually changed Inspecting the mail circulation adapters
- Moving the mail boxes Removing the mail databases It’s a great concept to run your Exchange
- 2013 servers in upkeep mode for a week or
- so to make sure that nothing
- is attempting to connect to them. It
‘s much easier to examine the logs to find that a forgotten or seldom used application or workflow is still using the old server instead of to try and repair why that’s failing when the server is gone. When you’re prepared, you can uninstall Exchange 2013, tidy up the firewall, Active Directory and DNS settings, and repurpose or dispose of the hardware or delete the virtual devices. Lose your last Exchange server Naturally, if you’re faced with a major upgrade like this, you may decide you ‘d rather stop running an Exchange server at all, especially due to current security problems. Alternatives to Exchange Server There are alternative mail servers for Windows like Axigen, hMailServer, mailEnable or Apache James– a few of which will also work on Linux– and some of
them use calendaring as well as
email. However, you’re losing Exchange-specific features like public folders and the tight combination with other Microsoft tools, such as using OneDrive for Organization for sharing and editing documents inside Outlook. Even if you have SharePoint, without Exchange, you will not get all of the functions of Groups or the upcoming Loop elements. You can also think about moving to Gmail or another online provider with collaboration features, like Zoho. Or stay in the Microsoft environment If you’re remaining in the Microsoft community, the apparent choice is to transfer to Exchange Online. You get exactly the same features and admin tools and the very same combination with Active Directory site, plus bigger mailboxes, better spam and antimalware defense, and brand-new tools like focused inbox and Viva Insights. Moreover, you do n’t have to maintain and update a server or handle future migrations; although, the next version of Exchange Server will streamline that by supporting in-place upgrades. The majority of Microsoft 365, Workplace 365 and Exchange Online memberships certify services for Fast Track support with the migration from Microsoft. When is the most recent I should upgrade to Exchange Server 2019? Up up until April 11, 2023, you can use Exchange Server 2013 to move to Exchange Online or Microsoft 365, then transfer to Exchange 2019 and decommission your Exchange 2013 servers after you migrate. If you utilize Unified Messaging in Exchange 2013 and you’re transferring to Cloud Voicemail, doing it because order will avoid voicemail interruptions. However, if you’re not going to get all of that done by the cutoff date, you’ll need to upgrade to Exchange 2019 first and utilize that to migrate to Microsoft 365. Because as soon as it runs out assistance
, you won’t have the ability to use Exchange 2013 for the migration. If you’ve already transferred to Exchange Online and you have actually just been keeping Exchange Server around to handle receivers by syncing your Active Directory site to Azure advertisement– a typical scenario typically known as the “last Exchange server”– you can run the Exchange Server 2019 Management Tools on any domain-joined Windows system and get rid of your regional Exchange server altogether. Simply make sure you close down and reformat the server when you make certain you do not require it anymore rather than uninstalling Exchange, since that will remove important details from Active Directory.
And if you want a graphical user interface rather than handling through PowerShell, have a look at the(unofficial)Exchange Recipient Admin Center. If you’ve been utilizing Exchange Server for SMTP relay, you can use an Edge Transportation server rather. Source
