Exchange 2019: The first impression (part 2)

In the first part of the article I have installed the Exchange 2019 Preview. The setup is almost identical to Exchange 2016. Here is the second part of my first impression of Exchange 2019.

Configuration

After installation, the Start menu contains the familiar entries from Exchange 2016:

A small side note: As with Exchange Server 2016, the "Exchange Server Help" link leads to the Exchange 2013 documentation in Technet. The link should therefore be updated, because the documentary is no longer in Technet, but now at docs.microsoft.com and the version cannot be changed:

On to the configuration. The Exchange Admin Center is completely identical to Exchange 2016, I only compared the menu items quickly, but someone who has already worked with Exchange 2016 will only be able to tell (at least in the preview) by the version number whether they are dealing with Exchange 2016 or Exchange 2019:

This would also make it clear that Exchange 2019 uses the version number 15.2 (Exchange 2010 = V14, Exchange 2013 = V15, Exchange 2016 = V15.1, Exchange 2019 = V15.2).

Malicious tongues will probably claim that this is basically just another service pack for Exchange 2013. However, it makes perfect sense to keep V15 from the point of view of compatibility with other software, especially if Exchange APIs and protocols remain compatible. Personally, I think it's good that V15 is being retained here, because that's how my little script "Exchange Configurator 2016" continue:

Good... but now I have nothing more to report here. The Basic configuration is identical to Exchange 2016, so I won't go into a full description here. One advantage, however, is that the many well-known and proven scripts will most likely also work with Exchange 2019 or require only minimal adjustments.

OWA (or Outlook on the Web)

Even with OWA (or Outlook on the Web), there are no obvious changes for the user at first:

Again, at first glance, I can't see any change compared to Exchange 2016. This is positive for users, because an Exchange 2013/2016 user will also find their way around OWA on Exchange 2019 without instruction/training. From an admin perspective, this is almost boring.

First conclusion

From an admin perspective, almost nothing changes. The installation and configuration related to the Exchange 2019 preview is identical to Exchange 2016. There are no new challenges or fundamentally new topics for admins.

With the new Exchange version, Microsoft has mainly made changes to the substructure. The Exchange Unified Messaging role has been removed, but I don't think anyone will miss it. Search has been further improved and now uses technology from Bing. I would like to be able to search and find things within Outlook / OWA just as quickly as on the Goo...Bing website, preferably independent of the cache mode. But this still has to be proven in practice.

SSDs as tiered storage and support for 48 CPU cores and 256 GB RAM per Exchange Server may sound good, but most visitors to my website are unlikely to implement this.

Exchange 2019 will be the first Exchange version that can be installed on Windows Server (2019) Core, I personally think that's great, I don't need a GUI just to start the management shell locally on the server or to call up the Exchange Admin Center locally. If this means fewer restarts due to updates: Cool!