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You Had Me At EHLO...

aka the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog


Exchange 2010 SP1 FAQ and Known IssuesSeptember 1

Last week we released Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1. It has received some great feedback and reviews from customers, experts, analysts, and the Exchange community.

The starting point for SP1 setup/upgrade should be the What's New in SP1, SP1 Release Notes, and Prerequisites docs. As with any new release, there are some frequently asked deployment questions, and known issues, or issues reported by some customers. You may not face these in your environment, but we're posting these here along with some workarounds so you're aware of them as you test and deploy SP1.

  1. Upgrade order

    The order of upgrade from Exchange 2010 RTM to SP1 hasn’t changed from what was done in Exchange 2007. Upgrade server roles in the following order:

    1. Client Access server
    2. Hub Transport server
    3. Unified Messaging server
    4. Mailbox server

    The Edge Transport server role can be upgraded at any time; however, we recommend upgrading Edge Transport either before all other server roles have been upgraded

Exchange 2010 SP1 and Support for FIPS Compliant AlgorithmsAugust 30

When will Exchange Server 2010 support FIPS compliance?
Exchange Server 2010 SP1 provides for the ability to disable algorithms which are not FIPS 140-2 compliant. These algorithms are used for encryption, hashing, and signing within the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems that support Exchange Server 2010. When the System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing setting is enabled in a Group Policy or Local Policy, it disables the use of non-FIPS compliant algorithms such as RC-4. In Exchange 2010 RTM, it caused certain functions to fail. The most notable issue was in Outlook Web App (OWA), as documented in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article KB977961, and in the web-based Exchange Control Panel (ECP).

What is FIPS?
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) are standards utilized to define security and interoperability requirements for cryptographic algorithms that the US Government uses. The FIPS 140-2 publication and standard (Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules - PDF) defines the cryptographic algorithms as well as standards for key genera


Effects of Throttling on Your Deployment in Exchange 2010 SP1August 27

Exchange 2010 features a new resource protection mechanism - user throttling. This feature is designed to limit the amount of resources a single user or application can take up on a CAS to prevent poorly written applications from causing denial of service (DoS) to the rest of the users. You can read about throttling in Understanding Client Throttling Policies. If any of the terminology in this post sounds unfamiliar, please refer to this documentation.

While Exchange 2010 RTM shipped with user throttling "off" by default (most limits were set to infinite), after more testing in Exchange 2010 SP1, we've come up with a tighter set of limits for the throttling policies, and have thus turned user throttling on by default.

We have also changed what happens when users exceed their budget in some cases. In Exchange 2010 RTM version, Exchange rejected any Exchange Web Service (EWS), Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) and Outlook Web App (OWA) requests made by users who exceeded their budget. We've improved on this idea in SP1 in the EWS and ActiveSync protocols, by instead delaying the call just enough for the budget to recharge back into the positive and then execute the request. This means that end users will generally see fewer errors from the ActiveSync client or EWS application. In some rare conditions, such as if the caller is exceeding max number of connections or subscrip

The Future of Exchange Starts Here: Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Is Now AvailableAugust 25

You have been eagerly waiting, and we have been working hard over the summer to deliver the latest Exchange Server 2010 enhancements as soon as possible. I am extremely happy to announce the availability of Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1, ready for download here.

We released the SP1 beta at Tech Ed North America in June. We also shared some of the SP1 enhancements in Yes Virginia, there is an Exchange Server 2010 SP1 back in April. Since then, almost 500,000 SP1 mailboxes have gone into production in Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customer environments.

Rather than recap all the SP1 features, I

Exchange 2010 SP1: Database Integrity checkingAugust 23

Since the earliest versions of Exchange Server, the Information Store Integrity Checker (ISInteg) has offered Exchange administrators a way to check mailbox and public folder database integrity. ISInteg checks and fixes Exchange database errors that may prevent the database from mounting, prevent the user from logging on or from receiving, opening or deleting email. Curious to know what changes are coming to ISInteg in Exchange 2010 SP1? Let's take a look.

In Exchange 2010 SP1, ISInteg is no longer a standalone program.

The functionality provided by the ISInteg tool has been rolled into two new Exchange Management Shell cmdlets:

  • New-MailboxRepairRequest
  • New-PublicFolderDatabaseRepairRequest
Note: Like other Shell cmdlets, these are subject to Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) scoping restrictions. For details, see Understanding Management Role Scopes.

Cool Features

These new ISInteg cmdlets come with some cool new functionality!
  • The cmdlets work with the database mounted. It's no longer required to unmount the database to perform an integrity check or fix database error