When it got here out, Trade Server 2013 eliminated loads of deployment complexity. It might scale from a single server to the thousands and thousands of mailboxes in Workplace 365.
It additionally had higher administration instruments, together with public folder and cell system administration, higher availability with computerized failover, Outlook net entry that was nearly indistinguishable from desktop Outlook, and a hybrid choice that allow you to begin shifting mailboxes to the cloud with out giving up all of your on premises servers.
With the most up-to-date updates, Trade Server helps Home windows Prolonged Safety, which improves Home windows authentication protocols to guard in opposition to authentication relay or man within the center assaults.
Why do you have to improve to Trade Server 2019?
However even should you’re updated on safety patches, you continue to must plan to maneuver off of Trade Server 2013 within the subsequent few months. After April 11, 2023, it received’t be getting bug fixes, safety patches, technical help or time zone updates—and international locations and states make final minute modifications to their daylight financial savings schedule extra typically than you may count on.
An Trade server incorporates a few of a corporation’s most delicate company knowledge, together with an organization tackle guide that might be helpful to attackers making an attempt to idiot workers with phishing or enterprise e mail compromise. Contemplating how shortly most organizations would grind to a halt with out e mail and shared calendars for conferences, safety and help are essential.
In the event you’re nonetheless operating your individual Trade server fairly than utilizing Microsoft 365, it’s normally due to regulatory necessities or excessive confidentiality issues, which makes it much more vital to remain in help.
SEE: Guidelines: Server stock (TechRepublic Premium)
What’s included in Trade Server 2019?
Though it was initially deliberate for this yr, the subsequent model of Trade Server received’t be obtainable till the second half of 2025. In the event you had been ready for that, improve to Trade Server 2019 as an alternative; you don’t want to put in Trade Server 2016 first.
There are safety enhancements: Consumer connections use TLS 1.2, and shortly TLS 1.3, by default, and you may disable legacy authentication, which is weak to interception and brute power assaults. Furthermore, Outlook makes use of MAPI over HTTP because the default connection to Trade, which supplies customers a extra secure and dependable connection; though, you might want to allow that in Trade 2013 earlier than establishing Trade 2019. There are enhancements to the compliance and knowledge loss prevention options as nicely, and calendar conferences that want to remain confidential will be set to Do Not Ahead.
Plus, Trade search has been utterly rebuilt: It’s based mostly on the Trade On-line search infrastructure and may index a lot greater information with higher search efficiency.
Shifting to Trade Server 2019
Though it’s typically potential to do an in-place improve of Trade, it’s not supported. And should you’re shifting from Trade 2013, it’s unlikely your servers will meet the Trade 2019 {hardware} necessities. Given how way more highly effective central processing items have grow to be during the last decade, you’ll possible have the ability to help the identical variety of mailboxes with fewer servers.
You’ll must run Home windows Server 2019 or Home windows Server 2022, however you possibly can run Trade 2019 on Home windows Server Core to scale back the patching floor. You’ll be able to preserve your Lively Listing forest useful stage at Home windows Server 2012 R2 for the migration, although you may need to enhance efficiency by upgrading that later.
With extra highly effective CPUs in servers, Trade 2019 doesn’t want an structure that divides up duties for efficiency. As an alternative, it’s optimized to benefit from the {hardware} you may have and for failure isolation.
That’s why there at the moment are solely two server roles. Mailbox consists of consumer entry providers like authentication, redirection and proxying, which had their very own position in Trade 2013, in addition to the transport service and mailbox databases. And Edge Transport, which is deployed exterior of your Lively Listing forest to deal with internet-facing mail stream, reduces the assault floor of your Trade server in addition to provides one other layer of safety in opposition to malware.
Upgrading requires updates and issues to retain all providers
It may appear unusual to replace Trade 2013 simply so you possibly can arrange Trade 2019, however you’ll must be on one of many two most up-to-date cumulative updates for Trade 2013 to be in help and for it to coexist with Trade 2019 when you work via the improve. When you have Trade 2013 Consumer Entry servers, you possibly can proxy visitors from them to Trade 2019 mailboxes, which supplies you extra flexibility.
One Trade 2013 function you don’t get in Trade 2019 is Unified Messaging, which places voicemail within the Outlook inbox. In the event you’re not prepared to modify to Groups as an alternative, you’ll must arrange Skype for Enterprise Server 2019 and use the Microsoft Cloud Voicemail service. In the event you’ve been utilizing Trade 2013 Unified Messaging along with your personal department trade, that’s extra advanced to get working with Skype for Enterprise Server, and chances are you’ll need to think about Microsoft Groups Telephone and cloud PBX as an alternative.
You’ll additionally must verify which model of Outlook your customers are on. Trade 2019 doesn’t help something older than Outlook 2013, so should you nonetheless have Outlook 2010, you’ll must replace that as nicely.
Use the Trade Deployment Assistant to get a step-by-step plan for shifting from Trade 2013 to 2019. It would stroll you thru the complete course of from Lively Listing schema updates and Area Title System settings to configuring Trade, shifting mailboxes and public folders, and eradicating any pointless permissions when you’re accomplished.
Suggestions for decommissioning Trade 2013
After you have Trade 2019 up and operating, you possibly can decommission your Trade 2013 servers. There’s a useful guidelines of the steps to comply with right here, together with:
- Inventorying purposes, purchasers and Autodiscover connections and ensuring they’re configured for the brand new Trade server
- Acquiring a brand new Safe Sockets Layer certificates if the namespace has modified
- Checking the mail stream connectors
- Migrating the mailboxes
- Eradicating the mail databases
It’s a good suggestion to run your Trade 2013 servers in upkeep mode for every week or so to ensure that nothing is making an attempt to connect with them. It’s simpler to verify the logs to seek out {that a} forgotten or not often used utility or workflow remains to be utilizing the outdated server fairly than to try to troubleshoot why that’s failing as soon as the server is gone.
Whenever you’re prepared, you possibly can uninstall Trade 2013, clear up the firewall, Lively Listing and DNS settings, and repurpose or eliminate the {hardware} or delete the digital machines.
Lose your final Trade server
In fact, should you’re confronted with a serious improve like this, you may resolve you’d fairly cease operating an Trade server in any respect, particularly in gentle of current safety points.
Alternate options to Trade Server
There are various mail servers for Home windows like Axigen, hMailServer, mailEnable or Apache James—a few of which will even run on Linux—and a few of them provide calendaring in addition to e mail. However, you’re shedding Trade-specific options like public folders and the tight integration with different Microsoft instruments, similar to utilizing OneDrive for Enterprise for sharing and modifying paperwork inside Outlook.
Even if in case you have SharePoint, with out Trade, you received’t get the entire options of Groups or the upcoming Loop parts. You too can think about shifting to Gmail or one other on-line supplier with collaboration options, like Zoho.
Or keep within the Microsoft ecosystem
In the event you’re staying within the Microsoft ecosystem, the plain choice is to transfer to Trade On-line. You get precisely the identical options and admin instruments and the identical integration with Lively Listing, plus bigger mailboxes, higher spam and antimalware safety, and new instruments like targeted inbox and Viva Insights.
Furthermore, you don’t have to take care of and improve a server or deal with future migrations; though, the following model of Trade Server will simplify that by supporting in-place upgrades. Most Microsoft 365, Workplace 365 and Trade On-line subscriptions qualify companies for Quick Monitor help with the migration from Microsoft.
When is the most recent I ought to improve to Trade Server 2019?
Up till April 11, 2023, you need to use Trade Server 2013 emigrate to Trade On-line or Microsoft 365, then transfer to Trade 2019 and decommission your Trade 2013 servers after you migrate. In the event you use Unified Messaging in Trade 2013 and also you’re shifting to Cloud Voicemail, doing it in that order will keep away from voicemail outages.
However, should you’re not going to get all of that accomplished by the cutoff date, you’ll must improve to Trade 2019 first and use that emigrate to Microsoft 365. As a result of as soon as it’s out of help, you received’t have the ability to use Trade 2013 for the migration.
In the event you’ve already moved to Trade On-line and also you’ve solely been retaining Trade Server round to handle recipients by syncing your Lively Listing to Azure AD—a typical state of affairs typically often called the “final Trade server”—you possibly can run the Trade Server 2019 Administration Instruments on any domain-joined Home windows system and do away with your native Trade server altogether.
Simply ensure you shut down and reformat the server if you’re certain you don’t want it any extra fairly than uninstalling Trade, as a result of that can take away vital data from Lively Listing. And in order for you a graphical person interface fairly than managing via PowerShell, take a look at the (unofficial) Trade Recipient Admin Heart. In the event you’ve been utilizing Trade Server for SMTP relay, you need to use an Edge Transport server as an alternative.
