Microsoft Releases Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Microsoft has been saying the Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) would be released “around” Q3 2009 and today, the wait is finally over!

Microsoft has officially launched Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP2, and it’s available for download on the Microsoft Download Center  Site: – Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 Download Link.

The code must have JUST been copied up to the Download Center because so far all the links are broken except for the Release Notes.  The “What’s New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2” is not yet working…

The new features, according to Microsoft, should excite Exchange Admins and IT Security Managers alike…

Customer Benefits
Key new features of Exchange Server 2007 SP2 unveiled today include:

• 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.
• Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality – A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool. Exchange Server 2007 didn’t have this capability on Windows Server 2008 and additional solutions were required to perform this task.
• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and 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.
• Public Folder Quota Management – SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
• Centralized Organizational Settings – SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
• Named Properties cmdlets – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging– SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

Ok, gotta go play. :)

Exchange 2007 SP2 Available – microsoftPost.com