SharePoint

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Announcing Microsoft Exchange Server vNext!

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Some really exciting Exchange Server news was announced for on premises customers at the Microsoft Ignite virtual conference today!

Microsoft will be releasing the next versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server the second half of 2021. These new on-premises server versions will only be available with the purchase of a subscription license, using a similar subscription model to Microsoft 365.

The name for these new on-premises server products has yet to be announced, but it is likely that Microsoft will drop the year from the version name since the new subscription server will be evergreen. Pricing and availability will be announced closer to the release date.

It's important for on-premises customers to know and stay on top of the Exchange Server product lifecycle policies for support and planning.

Product	End of Mainstream Support	End of Extended Support
Exchange Server 2010	01/13/2015	10/03/2020
Exchange Server 2013	04/10/2018	04/11/2023
Exchange Server 2016	10/13/2020	10/14/2025
Exchange Server 2019	01/09/2024	10/14/2025

As mentioned in the article, Exchange Server 2016 and the End of Mainstream Support, CU19 is the last planned update for Exchange Server 2016 and is due in December 2020. After December 15, 2020, only CU19 or its successors will receive critical updates.

Exchange Server Upgrade Planning

In the near-term, customers who plan to stay on-premises should upgrade to Exchange Server 2019 ASAP to maintain both critical security and non-critical feature updates. This will also put your organization in the best position for when Exchange Server vNext is released in the second half of 2021.

You'll be able to install Exchange Server vNext into an org with Exchange Server 2013, 2016 or 2019. That's one more version than they used to support. And for the first time ever, you'll be able to perform an in-place upgrade from Exchange Server 2019 to Exchange Server vNext. Even in the same DAG. This will make it the easiest Exchange upgrade ever!

The bottom line is, if you're going to be staying on-premises long term - start planning and installing Exchange Server 2019 today!

New hybrid customers or customers who plan to keep some mailboxes on-premises should definitely upgrade to Exchange 2019 and later, Exchange Server vNext when it's released.

Hybrid customers who have completed migrating all their mailboxes to Exchange Online can continue to use their existing Exchange 2016 server for hybrid management. Microsoft hopes to deliver a serverless management solution soon, but it will later than the CU19 release.

Other Exchange and Exchange Online News

Another important bit of news on hybrid is that the new HCW will support establishing a one-to-many on-premises to cloud tenant configuration. This is helpful for divestments and customers with multiple tenants. Just be aware it only works for Exchange 2016/2019 and Hybrid Modern Auth only works with one tenant.

Microsoft is also opening the distribution of the Exchange Server 2019 Capacity Calculator. It previously was available only to Volume License customers. You can get it from https://aka.ms/ExCalc.

"Plus Addressing" is now GA in Exchange Online. This lets users create "disposable" email addresses based on their primary email address. This lets users know where their email addresses are being leaked and create Inbox rules to handle them.

View the on-demand session, Exchange, Here, There and Everywhere, delivered by the ever-so-suave Greg Taylor.

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EXPTA Consulting provides professional upgrade, migration, and hybrid services for on-premises customers of all sizes. We specialize in Exchange, Microsoft 365, Active Directory, and identity solutions and pride ourselves on customer satisfaction.

Examples where we provide turn-key solutions or can work with your IT staff include:

Exchange and Active Directory Health Checks
Exchange on-premises upgrades and configuration
Exchange hybrid configuration and migrations to Exchange Online
Hybrid Modern Authentication (MFA) for Exchange on-premises
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) design and deployment

Contact us today for a free consultation.

Clearing up confusion about Office 365 Equivalency Use Rights

Friday, February 22, 2019

You may have heard about "Office 365 equivalency rights" or "dual use rights". These rights allow users to access on premises servers, such as Windows Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server using their Office 365 E3 or E5 licenses.

Office 365 equivalency licenses only provide user use rights, not server rights. In other words, O365 licenses are equivalent to Exchange Server Client Access Licenses (both Standard and Enterprise) and Windows Server CALs, but you still need server licenses to run Exchange Server on Windows Server on premises.

One exception to this rule is that your Office 365 subscription let's you use the free hybrid key to run an Exchange hybrid management server. An important caveat here is that the hybrid server cannot be used to host user mailboxes or Public Folders, and you may still need a server license for Windows Server. The free hybrid key is available to all Enterprise Office 365 customers, even if they get their license from the CSP channel which says it's "Not On Premises Capable -- Cloud only rights".

Microsoft used to have an authoritative website called, "Licensing How To: Using Office 365 user licenses to meet CAL requirements" that described how these equivalency rights work, but it became a casualty when Microsoft moved most documentation to docs.microsoft.com. Fortunately, you can still read a cached copy of that website from the web archive (for now, at least -- who knows how long that will last).

A suitable replacement for the now-gone licensing website is the Licensing Office 365 document. I include a copy of that PDF document here on my blog, just in case it falls to the same fate. ;)

Notable extracts from this document include the following about equivalent use rights:

“Office 365 E3 provides your users with the latest full Office across most devices, plus a wide range of integrated collaboration services coupled with advanced compliance features and full IT power. Office 365 Enterprise includes Office 365 ProPlus for up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets, and five smartphones. It also includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and Yammer Enterprise—along with access rights to equivalent on-premises server workloads.” (Page 3)
“Note that all Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 USL license a user for access to Windows Server, but does not include a license for the Windows Server product itself.” (Page 2)

Note that the title of the section is "On-premises server rights", but it should really be "On-premises user rights" since it only applies to the User Subscription License (USL).

Hopefully, this will help you answer some of your user CAL questions when you have an Office 365 subscription. I've seen some licensing providers say that you still need to buy user CALs, even when you have an Office 365 subscription that includes these equivalency rights.

Do you use AD RMS on-prem? You need to read this!

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Microsoft recently announced they will be automatically enabling the protection features in AIP (Azure Rights Management) beginning August 1, 2018. If your organization currently uses AD RMS and has hybrid coexistence with Office 365, it's important that you opt-out of this change immediately.

Please read my latest article on the ENow ESE Blog to learn what it's all about and what to you may need to do to prepare for this change.

New article: What to Do When the Office 365 Portal Goes Down

Thursday, July 13, 2017

I published a new article to the ENow Exchange & Office 365 Solutions Engine Blog (ESE), "What to Do When the Office 365 Portal Goes Down".

This article talks about recent availability failures in the Office 365 portal and provides direct URL links to Office 365 features and admin portals. Bookmark this page for reference the next time the portal becomes unavailable for your tenant!

Quickly installing MOSS 2007 with SP1 on Windows Server 2008

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

If you try to install MOSS 2007 on Windows Server 2008, you are going to get an error that there is an incompatibility. To install, you need SP1 for MOSS.

You can slipstream SP1 yourself, but it turns out there's an easier way. First, install the trial version of MOSS 2007 with SP1 (32 bit or 64 bit). After you install the trial version, upgrade from the trial version.

In Central Administration, on the top link bar, click Operations.
On the Operations page, in the Upgrade and Migration section, click Convert license type.
On the Convert License Type page, in the Enter the Product Key box, type the new product key.

Thanks to Kirk Allen for the tip!