What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007 SP2

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces many new features for each server role. This topic discusses the new and improved features that are added when you install Exchange 2007 SP2.

To download Exchange 2007 SP2, see Exchange Server 2007 Downloads.

Deploying Exchange Server 2010

You can deploy Exchange Server 2010 in your organization once all of the Client Access servers in your organization have been upgraded to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). In addition, any Exchange 2007 Server, regardless of server role, in the Active Directory site you are transitioning, must be upgraded to Exchange 2007 SP2.

Exchange Backup Functionality

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 includes a VSS plug-in for Windows Server Backup to support Exchange backups. Once SP2 is installed, you can use Windows Server Backup to back up and restore your Exchange 2007 SP2 databases. The new plug-in is delivered in the form of a single executable called WSBExchange.exe. This plug-in is automatically installed by SP2 on all Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers. The plug-in enables Windows Server Backup to be able to make Exchange-aware VSS backups. For more information about this feature and how to use it, see Using Windows Server Backup to Back Up and Restore Exchange Data.

Enhanced Auditing

New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository. This simplifies the auditing process and makes review of audited events easier by segregating audited events in a dedicated location. For more information about the new auditing features available with SP2, see Understanding Mailbox Access Auditing with Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3.

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. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema. For more information about Dynamic Active Directory Schema Validation, see Understanding Dynamic Schema Updates and Validation in Exchange 2007 SP2.

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. For more information about the new public folder quota management features, see the Set-PublicFolder cmdlet documentation.

Centralized Organizational Settings

There are several new cmdlet parameters that have been added that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.

For more information about the new cmdlet parameters, see the following topics:

In addition to the parameters that have been added to the cmdlet topics listed previously, the UseRUSServer parameter has been added to the following topics:

Improved Setup Program

Exchange 2007 SP2 includes changes to the Windows Installer Setup program. The following changes improve support for Exchange 2007 SP2 update rollup packages:

  • Upgraded WiX

    The Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset has been updated to the latest stable version.

  • Modified diagnostics registry entries

    The diagnostics registry entries have been recoded to be separate registry entries.

  • New stub components

    Stub components have been created for every Exchange server role.

  • Windows Installer 4.5

    Windows Installer (MSI) 4.5 is required to install Exchange 2007 SP2.

For detailed information about these changes, see Changes in the Exchange 2007 SP2 Setup Program.

For More Information

For more information, see the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Release Notes.