Microsoft has released its latest version of Exchange server i.e. Exchange Server 2016 with a lot of technological and innovative changes in it.Having said that, it is an upgraded version of Exchange server 2013. Most of the Users are very much excited working with this newest release, because of its new features. Also this new release more focused on the cloud.
What’s new?
Change in Architecture
Architecture is more simplified as compared to the older version. And the major change is in Server role. The earlier versions having three roles. Such as, Client Access Server role, Mailbox Server role and Edge Transport server role. where as in new release you can have only two roles, because the Mailbox server role and Client Access server roles are combined together as an Exchange Mailbox server.You no need to install them separately. This multiple role of the Mailbox server makes the maintenance easy.
Mailbox server takes care of the Transport Services; responsible for routing the mails. It stores mailbox databases. And also performs the client access services. Whereas,the Edge Transport server is responsible for handling all the external mail flow to the Exchange organization.
Outlook Web App in Exchange 2016 uses Office online server to preview the documents and also provides editing capabilities. In previous versions, Outlook Web App included WebReady Document Viewing for the built-in preview of Office and PDF documents.
Another considerable change is Improvement in Search. Most of the times users spend a lot of time in searching due to poor searching patterns and the results. This problem is no more exists because of improved search results including complete and accurate results, and search suggestions.
In Exchange Server 2016 MAPI over HTTP is the default protocol. This protocol is used by the Outlook to communicate with Exchange Server. Exchange 2016 also supports Outlook anywhere (RPC over HTTP) for those clients, who don’t support MAPI over HTTP.
Messaging Policy and Compliances
- In-place Archiving: Allows the user store their messages in archive mailbox. So that they can access the messages in Outlook.
- In-place eDiscovery and Auditing: In-place eDiscovery allows the user to search for mailbox data across Exchange Organization. And also you can export the search result to a PST file. With the improved audit logging it is easy to track the unauthorized access to the user mailbox.
- Data Loss Prevention(DLP) and Transport rules:It is very important for an Organization to protect their sensitive information such as Credit card number, Password etc. In order to achieve this, DLP and Transport rules help you to monitor and protect 80 sensitive information types.
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Better Document Collaboration
Exchange 2016 provides the features that help users to collaborate in email. Such as Site mailboxes, Shared mailboxes, Public folders and Distributed groups. These features can be used based on the User needs.
Site mailboxes are relying on SharePoint servers.And provides better document collaboration. Including, improved approaches to the attachments. It enables the Outlook on the web users to share the documents which is previously stored in OneDrive, instead of attaching the documents in the message itself.
Office 365 Hybrid
Unlike Exchange server 2013, In Exchange server 2016 you have to explicitly download and install Hybrid Configuration wizard as a small app. In this new version with this wizard it is easy to troubleshoot and resolve the problems which you encounter when you run the wizard. This wizard updated quickly to support the changes in Office 365 and also updated whenever the issues detected while configuring the Hybrid deployment.