• You are running Exchange 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008 OS. :)
• You do not install UM :)
• You only use Fixed Disks :(
• You do not run any management/AV/AS software on Hyper-V host. :(

2. Exchange Server 2007 is supported on 3rd Party virtualization software, as long as:

• Product has been validated by MS as part of this program: http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp/ :)
• At this point, this does not seem to include VMWare (or at least I don't see it in the list of supported vendors) :(

3. Exchange HA is supported. (as long as its not combined with Hyper-V HA)

4. Clustering is supported. (as long as you're not using clutered virtualized servers.)

5. Exchange Server 2003 is supported in a virtualization environment, as long as:

• Its running Exchange 2003 SP2 or higher.
• Its running on Virtual Server 2005 R2 or higher
• Exchange 2003 is NOT clustered
• VM Additions are installed on the guests.

This is a better story than what we've had up to now, albeit not a complete support policy yet. The obviously lack of support for VMWare, IMO, is going to be an issue. Though there is basic support for all 3rd party virtualization products. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/en-us

I’ve been getting this question a lot! “What tasks CANNOT be performed from the Exchange Management Console?”

The following is the answer to this question. I’ve done a “best effort” to compile a complete list of these tasks. Feel free to comment here if you feel I should add information to this post or if there is incorrect information.

Tasks that MUST be performed from the Exchange Management Shell

Mailbox, Recipient and Public Folder Settings  

·         Get a list of all mailboxes, organized by size and number of items – Get-MailboxStatistics

·         Perform bulk management of multiple attributes for mailbox recipients – Get-mailbox | Set-Mailbox

·         Bypass antispam filtering for a specific recipient(s) Set-Mailbox -AntispamBypassEnabled $true

·         Get information about public folder sizes – Get-PublicFolderStatisics

·         Upgrade address lists and email address policies from LDAP syntax (after a migration from 2003) to OPATH syntax – Set-EmailAddressList

·         Give permission to a user’s mailbox (to another user) – Add-MailboxPermission

·         Give permission to an entire database, to a user – Add-ADPermission

·         All Public Folder management, for example:

o   Create Public Folders (Can be done from Outlook)

o   Mail Enable Public Folders

o   Enable Public Folder replication

o   Suspend/Resume Public Folder replication

o   Modify Public Folder Replication

o   Set/Modify Public Folder Quota

o   Modify Public Folder Referrals

·         Extract specific content from a mailbox and copy it to an alternate location – Export-Mailbox

·         Configure a resource mailbox to automatically accept all meeting requests – Set-MailboxCalendarSettings

·         Create (and modify) a new Global Address List – New-GlobalAddressList

Transport Settings

·         Set a maximum message size for incoming or outgoing messages (org) – Set-TransportConfig

·         Disable Xexch50 for outbound ESMTP connections – Set-TransportConfig

·         Set a maximum message size for incoming or outgoing messages (conn) – Set-ReceiveConnector

·         Add the Antispam tab to the Exchange Management Console – Set-TransportServer –AntispamAgentsEnabled $true

·         Set advanced SMTP connection settings such as Tarpit, connection timeouts, inactivity timeouts etc... – Set-ReceiveConnector

·         Install or uninstall antispam agents on a Hub Transport server – (un)install-AntispamAgents

·         Modify the properties of the Content Filtering agent to filter messages originating from authenticated servers INSIDE the organization – Set-ContentFilterConfig (useful if another server relays the message but does not perform filtering)

·         Add an exception to the Content Filtering agent to NOT perform any filtering for a specified SMTP Domain or Sender – Set-ContentFilterConfig –BypassSenderDomains / BypassSenders

·         Update the safe senders aggregation list -  Update-SafeList

·         Modify properties for the transport dumpster (Enable/disable – Max Size) – Set-TransportServer

·         Override AD Site link costs with Exchange Specific costs – Set-ADSiteLink

·         Design Exchange Hub Sites for message routing – Set-ADSite

·         Force a manual start to the Edge Synchronization between the HT and the ET servers – Start-EdgeSynchronization

Client Access Settings

·         Set connection time-outs for POP3/IMAP4 servers – Set-IMAPSettings / Set-POPSettings

  Following settings should be used with a Get-CASMailbox and piped to the Set-CASMailbox to be applied globally.

·         Prevent previous versions of Outlook from connecting to Exchange – Set-CASMailbox –MAPIBlockOutlookVersions

·         Enable/disable POP3 or IMAP4 for a user – Set-CASMailbox

·         Disable selected features of OWA (Calendaring, Change Password button etc...) – Set-CASMailbox

Other

·         Reseed a LCR or CCR (Maybe SCR ?) database copy – Update-StorageGroupCopy

·         Specify a message class for Managed Content Settings (For message classes NOT available in the EMC, such as IPM.XYZ) -  New-ManagedContentSettings

·         Create a customized quota message to mailbox recipients – New-SystemMessage

·         Create a customized Delivery Status Notification message – New-SystemMessage

·         Enable/disable, modify the properties of Message Tracking – Set-MailboxServer

·         Specify the number of ‘unreplicated logs’ that a CCR node will allow, and still mount a database a failover – Set-MailboxServer –AutoDatabaseMountDial

·         Allow a database to be overwritten by a restore operation – Set-MailboxDatabase –AllowFileRestore

·         Configure domain controllers that should NOT be used by your Exchange server – Set-ExchangeServer –StaticExcludedDomainControllers

       Modify the email address visible by external recipients, for internal users – New-AddressRewriteEntry

• To install antispam agents on a Hub Transport server: From EMS, Install-AntiSpamAgents.PS1
• To enable the Antispam Tab in the Exchange Management Console: Set-TransportServer -AntiSpamAgentsEnabled $True (Automatically run as part of the script mentioned above)
• To view the list of INSTALLED Transport Agents: Get-TransportAgent (Note: If you disable an agent from the EMC, it will still show under this task as ENABLED)
• To view the status of a specific Transport Agent, for example Content Filtering agent: Get-ContentFilterConfig | FL (Note: If you disable the agent from the EMC, it will show under this task as DISABLED)
• To disable a specific Transport Agent, for example Content Filtering agent: Set-ContentFilterConfig -Enabled $False

Confused yet?

Basically, when you disable an agent from the list of agents in the EMC, and run a Get-TransportAgent, it shows as enabled. That is because you are disabling the filtering feature of the agent from the EMC and not the actual agent running on the messages. The whole thing is really not documented anywhere and may lead to confusion from some admins. Even more confusing, if you run the Set-TransportServer -Antispamagentsenabled $True cmd, the tab will show up in the EMC, but the agents will actually NOT be installed.