When it got here out, Alternate Server 2013 eliminated a whole lot of deployment complexity. It might scale from a single server to the hundreds of thousands of mailboxes in Workplace 365.
It additionally had higher administration instruments, together with public folder and cell system administration, higher availability with automated failover, Outlook internet entry that was virtually indistinguishable from desktop Outlook, and a hybrid possibility 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, Alternate Server helps Home windows Prolonged Safety, which improves Home windows authentication protocols to guard towards authentication relay or man within the center assaults.
Why must you improve to Alternate Server 2019?
However even in case you’re updated on safety patches, you continue to must plan to maneuver off of Alternate 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 nations and states make final minute adjustments to their daylight financial savings schedule extra typically than you would possibly count on.
An Alternate server accommodates a few of a corporation’s most delicate company information, together with an organization handle ebook that will be helpful to attackers attempting to idiot staff with phishing or enterprise electronic mail compromise. Contemplating how shortly most organizations would grind to a halt with out electronic mail and shared calendars for conferences, safety and help are essential.
Should you’re nonetheless working your personal Alternate server relatively than utilizing Microsoft 365, it’s often due to regulatory necessities or excessive confidentiality issues, which makes it much more essential to remain in help.
SEE: Guidelines: Server stock (TechRepublic Premium)
What’s included in Alternate Server 2019?
Though it was initially deliberate for this 12 months, the subsequent model of Alternate Server received’t be accessible till the second half of 2025. Should you had been ready for that, improve to Alternate Server 2019 as a substitute; you don’t want to put in Alternate Server 2016 first.
There are safety enhancements: Shopper 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 drive assaults. Furthermore, Outlook makes use of MAPI over HTTP because the default connection to Alternate, which supplies customers a extra secure and dependable connection; though, it’s essential allow that in Alternate 2013 earlier than establishing Alternate 2019. There are enhancements to the compliance and information loss prevention options as effectively, and calendar conferences that want to remain confidential might be set to Do Not Ahead.
Plus, Alternate search has been fully rebuilt: It’s primarily based on the Alternate On-line search infrastructure and may index a lot larger recordsdata with higher search efficiency.
Transferring to Alternate Server 2019
Though it’s generally doable to do an in-place improve of Alternate, it’s not supported. And in case you’re shifting from Alternate 2013, it’s unlikely your servers will meet the Alternate 2019 {hardware} necessities. Given how far more highly effective central processing models have grow to be over the past decade, you’ll doubtless 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 may run Alternate 2019 on Home windows Server Core to cut back the patching floor. You may maintain your Lively Listing forest useful stage at Home windows Server 2012 R2 for the migration, although you would possibly wish to enhance efficiency by upgrading that later.
With extra highly effective CPUs in servers, Alternate 2019 doesn’t want an structure that divides up duties for efficiency. As a substitute, it’s optimized to take advantage of the {hardware} you may have and for failure isolation.
That’s why there at the moment are solely two server roles. Mailbox contains shopper entry companies like authentication, redirection and proxying, which had their very own function in Alternate 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 movement, reduces the assault floor of your Alternate server in addition to provides one other layer of safety towards malware.
Upgrading requires updates and problems to retain all companies
It might sound unusual to replace Alternate 2013 simply so you may arrange Alternate 2019, however you’ll should be on one of many two most up-to-date cumulative updates for Alternate 2013 to be in help and for it to coexist with Alternate 2019 whilst you work by means of the improve. When you have Alternate 2013 Shopper Entry servers, you may proxy site visitors from them to Alternate 2019 mailboxes, which supplies you extra flexibility.
One Alternate 2013 function you don’t get in Alternate 2019 is Unified Messaging, which places voicemail within the Outlook inbox. Should you’re not prepared to modify to Groups as a substitute, you’ll must arrange Skype for Enterprise Server 2019 and use the Microsoft Cloud Voicemail service. Should you’ve been utilizing Alternate 2013 Unified Messaging along with your non-public department change, that’s extra complicated to get working with Skype for Enterprise Server, and chances are you’ll wish to think about Microsoft Groups Cellphone and cloud PBX as a substitute.
You’ll additionally must verify which model of Outlook your customers are on. Alternate 2019 doesn’t help something older than Outlook 2013, so in case you nonetheless have Outlook 2010, you’ll must replace that as effectively.
Use the Alternate Deployment Assistant to get a step-by-step plan for shifting from Alternate 2013 to 2019. It is going to stroll you thru all the course of from Lively Listing schema updates and Area Identify System settings to configuring Alternate, shifting mailboxes and public folders, and eradicating any pointless permissions when you’re completed.
Suggestions for decommissioning Alternate 2013
After you have Alternate 2019 up and working, you may decommission your Alternate 2013 servers. There’s a useful guidelines of the steps to observe right here, together with:
- Inventorying purposes, purchasers and Autodiscover connections and ensuring they’re configured for the brand new Alternate server
- Acquiring a brand new Safe Sockets Layer certificates if the namespace has modified
- Checking the mail movement connectors
- Migrating the mailboxes
- Eradicating the mail databases
It’s a good suggestion to run your Alternate 2013 servers in upkeep mode for every week or so to be sure that nothing is attempting to hook up with them. It’s simpler to verify the logs to seek out {that a} forgotten or not often used software or workflow continues to be utilizing the outdated server relatively than to try to troubleshoot why that’s failing as soon as the server is gone.
If you’re prepared, you may uninstall Alternate 2013, clear up the firewall, Lively Listing and DNS settings, and repurpose or get rid of the {hardware} or delete the digital machines.
Lose your final Alternate server
In fact, in case you’re confronted with a serious improve like this, you would possibly determine you’d relatively cease working an Alternate server in any respect, particularly in gentle of current safety points.
Options to Alternate Server
There are different mail servers for Home windows like Axigen, hMailServer, mailEnable or Apache James—a few of which can even run on Linux—and a few of them supply calendaring in addition to electronic mail. However, you’re dropping Alternate-specific options like public folders and the tight integration with different Microsoft instruments, resembling utilizing OneDrive for Enterprise for sharing and enhancing paperwork inside Outlook.
Even if in case you have SharePoint, with out Alternate, you received’t get all the options of Groups or the upcoming Loop elements. 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
Should you’re staying within the Microsoft ecosystem, the apparent possibility is to transfer to Alternate 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 centered inbox and Viva Insights.
Furthermore, you don’t have to keep up and improve a server or deal with future migrations; though, the following model of Alternate Server will simplify that by supporting in-place upgrades. Most Microsoft 365, Workplace 365 and Alternate On-line subscriptions qualify companies for Quick Observe help with the migration from Microsoft.
When is the newest I ought to improve to Alternate Server 2019?
Up till April 11, 2023, you should use Alternate Server 2013 emigrate to Alternate On-line or Microsoft 365, then transfer to Alternate 2019 and decommission your Alternate 2013 servers after you migrate. Should you use Unified Messaging in Alternate 2013 and also you’re shifting to Cloud Voicemail, doing it in that order will keep away from voicemail outages.
However, in case you’re not going to get all of that completed by the cutoff date, you’ll must improve to Alternate 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 Alternate 2013 for the migration.
Should you’ve already moved to Alternate On-line and also you’ve solely been retaining Alternate Server round to handle recipients by syncing your Lively Listing to Azure AD—a standard state of affairs typically generally known as the “final Alternate server”—you may run the Alternate Server 2019 Administration Instruments on any domain-joined Home windows system and do away with your native Alternate server altogether.
Simply ensure you shut down and reformat the server if you’re positive you don’t want it any extra relatively than uninstalling Alternate, as a result of that may take away essential data from Lively Listing. And if you need a graphical consumer interface relatively than managing by means of PowerShell, take a look at the (unofficial) Alternate Recipient Admin Heart. Should you’ve been utilizing Alternate Server for SMTP relay, you should use an Edge Transport server as a substitute.
