14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of July 2009, Microsoft was giving out signals that the second service pack for Exchange Server 2007 was just around the corner. Approximately one month later, Exchange Server 2007 users can now download Service Pack 2. The Microsoft Download Center has been offering Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 since Monday August 24th, 2009, and the download is currently up for grabs. SP2 brings to the table a range of enhancements and new features, and the Redmond company is offering a detailed insight on the “What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2” webpage. In addition, customers looking to integrate the second service pack for Exchange Server 2007 into their environments also have available the Release Notes accompanying the download.
“Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) has been designed specifically to help meet the challenges of any business and the needs of all the different groups with a stake in the messaging system. Exchange Server 2007 SP2 is a mission-critical communications tool that enables employees to be more productive and access their information anywhere and anytime while providing a messaging system that enables rich, efficient access to e-mail, calendar items, voice mail, and contacts. For the administrator, Exchange Server 2007 SP2 provides advanced protection options against e-mail security threats, such as spam and viruses, as well as the tools to help manage internal compliance and high availability needs,” revealed Mark Fugatt - Exchange and OCS Microsoft Premier Field Engineer.
Following the deployment of SP2, the build number of Exchange Server 2007 will be bumped all the way to 8.2.176.2, Microsoft informed. The company noted that the latest release of Exchange Server 2007 was designed to play nice with the next iteration of the product. In this context, customers test driving Exchange Server 2010 will be able to deploy the bits alongside Exchange Server 2007 SP2.
“Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces many new features for each server role,” the company revealed and enumerated: “- Exchange Backup Functionality - Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 includes a VSS plug-in for Windows Server Backup to support Exchange backups. - Enhanced Auditing - new Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. - Dynamic Active Directory Schema Validation - The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. - Public Folder Quota Management - Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 provides a more efficient way to manage Public Folder quotas by improving the current cmdlets and removing the dependency on the Public Folder Distributed Authoring and Versioning Administration to perform management tasks.”
Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 is available for download here.
Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.