Simply put, Scott Schnoll is and always will be a legend among the Exchange crowd.  He always gives some great talks.

Let’s hop right into it:

• Storage Enhancements
  • Multiple Databases per volume
    • Number of copies must equal the number on volumes
      • Example of valid design:  Databases 1 through 4 are copied onto 4 volumes in an ‘Active/Standby/Standby/Lagged’ configuration
      • This also ties into Automatic Reseeding
    • Reseeds are much faster in this scenario – potential days shaved off
    • 20% reduction in passive copy IOPS
    • Allows for an increase in disk utilization (MSIT was able to go from 360 to 600 mailboxes on the same spindles)
    • Failover is ~10 seconds in the production environment!
    • Requirements:
      • 1 Partition
      • The number of database copies per volume must equal the copies of each database
        • This also ties into Automatic Reseeding
    • Best Practices
      • Same neighbors on all servers
      • Balance your Activation Preferences
  • Automatic Reseeding
    • Uses spare drives mapped to mount points to handle failover (think of it like storage level sparing)
    • Much easier to implement this from the start – while you can transition to this, it is NOT easy
    • Basic ‘How it works’
      • Configure Storage
      • Create DAG
      • Create Directory and mount points
      • Configure DAG Properties
        • AutoDagVolumesRootFolderPath
        • AutoDagDatasesRootFolderPath
        • AutoDagDatabaseCopiesPerVolume
      • Create Databases
      • Put some mailboxes on them
  • Automatic Recovery from Storage Failues
    • Used for hung databases, locked controllers, etc.
    • Works like Managed availability – will restart services/attempt to mount, else restarts server if good copy exists elsewhere in DAG that is mountable
  • Improved Lagged Copies
    • Activation is simplified!
    • Automatic Playback of log files in critical situations
      • Yes, Exchange 2013 is nearly self-aware.
    • Integration with Safety Net (FKA Transport Dumpster)
    • Takes care of itself
      • Handles low log disk space (plays in log files to free up space)
      • Page Patching
      • Activates itself if less than 3 good copies!
        • Also configurable via AD and registry (have to modify both)
    • No need for log surgery or hunting for corruption – it handles it for you!
• Managed Availability
  • Gives the Best Server & Copy Selection process increased functionality and intelligence in its decision making processes
  • It notifies through the event logs so 3^rd party folks can snag events
  • SCOM is highly recommended
  • It really will damage test environments if you don’t change the defaults!
• Single Copy Alerting
  • In 2010 it was a scheduled task
  • Now it’s an MA rule
  • Will throw eventID 4138 for Red, 4139 for Green
• Best Copy Selection Changes
  • Looks at the entire server
  • Active Manager runs it
  • Includes the protocol stack to insure that any move will actually function.
  • Will prefer servers in this order:
    • All Healthy Status
    • Health Sets at Medium or higher
    • Better than source
    • Same as source
• Maintenance Mode
  • Now there’s a maintenance mode!
• DAG Networks
  • Automatically configured
    • This is based on the idea that your MAPI network interface has a registration in DNS while your Replication interface should NOT.
  • Can always be manually configured.
• Site Resiliency
  • 2010 – Operationally complex, you have to shift everything (MBX, HUB, CAS) and the namespace is a single point of failure
  • 2013 – Simplified, can recover either CAS/MBX or both, and the namespace is now redundant
  • Recovery is automatic now
  • DNS resolves to multiple IP address
  • Clients (Outlook 2007+, OWA, etc.) will skip failed IP addresses after 20 second timeouts
  • Preferred Configuration
    • 3 Sites
      • 2 sites with Exchange components
      • 1 site with file share witness (minimal requirements)
        • This host is highly recommended to be isolated from the networks of the 2 Exchange sites (i.e. if your 2 sites are on ATT, run the 3^rd on Verizon)
  • Expect ~20 second site failovers for CAS, similar time for MBX
  • Can manually failover sites through 3 powershell commands!

So, I’ll give you some brief Cliff’s on this rather lengthy synopsis:  It will be very difficult to kill off a properly architected Exchange 2013 installation.