When it got here out, Change Server 2013 eliminated loads of deployment complexity. It may 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 cellular gadget administration, higher availability with computerized failover, Outlook net entry that was virtually indistinguishable from desktop Outlook, and a hybrid choice that allow you to begin transferring mailboxes to the cloud with out giving up all of your on premises servers.
With the latest updates, Change 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 Change Server 2019?
However even when you’re updated on safety patches, you continue to have to plan to maneuver off of Change 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 modifications to their daylight financial savings schedule extra typically than you would possibly anticipate.
An Change server accommodates a few of a company’s most delicate company knowledge, together with an organization deal with e book that will be helpful to attackers making an attempt to idiot workers with phishing or enterprise electronic mail compromise. Contemplating how rapidly most organizations would grind to a halt with out electronic mail and shared calendars for conferences, safety and help are vital.
If you happen to’re nonetheless operating your individual Change server relatively than utilizing Microsoft 365, it’s normally 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 Change Server 2019?
Though it was initially deliberate for this 12 months, the following model of Change Server received’t be accessible till the second half of 2025. If you happen to had been ready for that, improve to Change Server 2019 as an alternative; you don’t want to put in Change 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 Change, which provides customers a extra steady and dependable connection; though, you must allow that in Change 2013 earlier than establishing Change 2019. There are enhancements to the compliance and knowledge loss prevention options as properly, and calendar conferences that want to remain confidential could be set to Do Not Ahead.
Plus, Change search has been fully rebuilt: It’s based mostly on the Change On-line search infrastructure and may index a lot larger recordsdata with higher search efficiency.
Shifting to Change Server 2019
Though it’s typically doable to do an in-place improve of Change, it’s not supported. And when you’re transferring from Change 2013, it’s unlikely your servers will meet the Change 2019 {hardware} necessities. Given how rather more highly effective central processing items have turn out to be over the past decade, you’ll doubtless be capable of help the identical variety of mailboxes with fewer servers.
You’ll have to run Home windows Server 2019 or Home windows Server 2022, however you possibly can run Change 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 would possibly wish to enhance efficiency by upgrading that later.
With extra highly effective CPUs in servers, Change 2019 doesn’t want an structure that divides up duties for efficiency. As a substitute, it’s optimized to profit from the {hardware} you could have and for failure isolation.
That’s why there are actually solely two server roles. Mailbox contains consumer entry providers like authentication, redirection and proxying, which had their very own position in Change 2013, in addition to the transport service and mailbox databases. And Edge Transport, which is deployed outdoors of your Lively Listing forest to deal with internet-facing mail move, reduces the assault floor of your Change server in addition to provides one other layer of safety towards malware.
Upgrading requires updates and issues to retain all providers
It might sound unusual to replace Change 2013 simply so you possibly can arrange Change 2019, however you’ll must be on one of many two most up-to-date cumulative updates for Change 2013 to be in help and for it to coexist with Change 2019 when you work by way of the improve. In case you have Change 2013 Shopper Entry servers, you possibly can proxy visitors from them to Change 2019 mailboxes, which provides you extra flexibility.
One Change 2013 function you don’t get in Change 2019 is Unified Messaging, which places voicemail within the Outlook inbox. If you happen to’re not prepared to change to Groups as an alternative, you’ll have to arrange Skype for Enterprise Server 2019 and use the Microsoft Cloud Voicemail service. If you happen to’ve been utilizing Change 2013 Unified Messaging together with your personal department change, that’s extra advanced to get working with Skype for Enterprise Server, and it’s possible you’ll wish to take into account Microsoft Groups Cellphone and cloud PBX as an alternative.
You’ll additionally have to verify which model of Outlook your customers are on. Change 2019 doesn’t help something older than Outlook 2013, so when you nonetheless have Outlook 2010, you’ll have to replace that as properly.
Use the Change Deployment Assistant to get a step-by-step plan for transferring from Change 2013 to 2019. It would stroll you thru the complete course of from Lively Listing schema updates and Area Title System settings to configuring Change, transferring mailboxes and public folders, and eradicating any pointless permissions when you’re finished.
Ideas for decommissioning Change 2013
After you have Change 2019 up and operating, you possibly can decommission your Change 2013 servers. There’s a helpful 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 Change server
- Acquiring a brand new Safe Sockets Layer certificates if the namespace has modified
- Checking the mail move connectors
- Migrating the mailboxes
- Eradicating the mail databases
It’s a good suggestion to run your Change 2013 servers in upkeep mode for every week or so to be sure that nothing is making an attempt to connect with them. It’s simpler to verify the logs to search out {that a} forgotten or hardly ever used utility or workflow remains to be utilizing the outdated server relatively than to attempt to troubleshoot why that’s failing as soon as the server is gone.
If you’re prepared, you possibly can uninstall Change 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 Change server
In fact, when you’re confronted with a significant improve like this, you would possibly resolve you’d relatively cease operating an Change server in any respect, particularly in gentle of current safety points.
Options to Change 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 Change-specific options like public folders and the tight integration with different Microsoft instruments, akin to utilizing OneDrive for Enterprise for sharing and modifying paperwork inside Outlook.
Even when you’ve got SharePoint, with out Change, you received’t get the entire options of Groups or the upcoming Loop parts. You may also take into account transferring to Gmail or one other on-line supplier with collaboration options, like Zoho.
Or keep within the Microsoft ecosystem
If you happen to’re staying within the Microsoft ecosystem, the apparent choice is to maneuver to Change 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 Change Server will simplify that by supporting in-place upgrades. Most Microsoft 365, Workplace 365 and Change On-line subscriptions qualify companies for Quick Observe help with the migration from Microsoft.
When is the newest I ought to improve to Change Server 2019?
Up till April 11, 2023, you need to use Change Server 2013 emigrate to Change On-line or Microsoft 365, then transfer to Change 2019 and decommission your Change 2013 servers after you migrate. If you happen to use Unified Messaging in Change 2013 and also you’re transferring to Cloud Voicemail, doing it in that order will keep away from voicemail outages.
However, when you’re not going to get all of that finished by the cutoff date, you’ll have to improve to Change 2019 first and use that emigrate to Microsoft 365. As a result of as soon as it’s out of help, you received’t be capable of use Change 2013 for the migration.
If you happen to’ve already moved to Change On-line and also you’ve solely been conserving Change Server round to handle recipients by syncing your Lively Listing to Azure AD—a standard situation typically generally known as the “final Change server”—you possibly can run the Change Server 2019 Administration Instruments on any domain-joined Home windows system and eliminate your native Change server altogether.
Simply be sure to shut down and reformat the server once you’re positive you don’t want it any extra relatively than uninstalling Change, as a result of that can take away essential data from Lively Listing. And if you’d like a graphical consumer interface relatively than managing by way of PowerShell, take a look at the (unofficial) Change Recipient Admin Middle. If you happen to’ve been utilizing Change Server for SMTP relay, you need to use an Edge Transport server as an alternative.
