Any Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) provides a unique opportunity to engage in direct debate with the Exchange development group. Lots of engineers and product managers will be present at the conference and they won’t be able to hide! Not that they would, of course, but it will be difficult for engineers and product managers to disguise their status given that many of them will be presenting sessions.
Given a target-rich environment for people who might provide interesting answers to questions, here’s a selection of questions relating to Exchange 2013 that I’m interested in knowing more about. You probably have your own list, but for those who don’t…
- Explain the full deployment methodology required to introduce Exchange 2013 into an existing organization containing Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 servers. What server roles are introduced first, where do they go, and are there any specific interoperability issues to deal with?
- Why have you dropped context-sensitive menus and the PowerShell learning tools from the Exchange Administration Center (EAC)? Given that Exchange 2013 includes almost 200 new PowerShell cmdlets, it doesn’t sound like a great idea to drop features that helped administrators understand the syntax and use of Exchange’s cmdlets.
- What features of Exchange 2013 such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and site mailboxes depend on Outlook 2013? Of course, some features also depend on SharePoint 2013 (site mailboxes again), so you could have a discussion about that as well.
- What features won’t be fully supported by OWA until SP1? DLP is one. What, if any, others are known?
- What migration facilities will Microsoft provide to move old and creaking public folders to brand-new sparkling public folders? Yes, we know that some scripts are in the kit, but how are these scripts used most effectively, what kind of public folder deployments has Microsoft tested the scripts on, and what are the known problem areas?
- Given Microsoft’s recent decision to drop support for on-premises Forefront Protection for Exchange (FPE), what’s the future for the Exchange 2013 Edge server and Microsoft’s on-premises anti-malware solutions?
- What backup products will support single-node Exchange 2013 servers and servers deployed into a Database Availability Group (DAG)? Windows Backup is not the right answer!
- Given that you can’t upgrade an Exchange server to Exchange 2013 and that new server hardware is likely required for a deployment, what sizing and performance guidelines are available for the brand-new CAS (front-end) and mailbox (back-end) Exchange 2013 servers?
- What operating system would you use for an Exchange 2013 deployment – Windows 2008 R2 SP1 or Windows 2012? And why?
Be nice when you quiz engineers. They’re much more likely to engage in a useful conversation if you approach them in a friendly fashion. And maybe offer to buy a coffee or other beverage of choice to help encourage interaction. That always helps for me!
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