The old dumpster in Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 was valuable for recovering deleted email, but it had some basic compliance shortcomings. (Want more information on dumpster? See here.) It only contained deleted email, not deleted calendars or contacts. It was not indexed or searchable, and users were allowed to purge email from the dumpster, perhaps in violation of email retention policy.

Exchange 2010 has some important improvements to the dumpster. It now:

• Includes all deleted items from the mailbox, including email, calendars, contacts, and more.
• Is indexed so it can be searched using the new multi-mailbox search tool in Exchange 2010.
• Is extended with new Purges and Versions folders:
  • The Purges folder keeps items that users purge from the dumpster for the length of the dumpster retention period.
  • The Versions folder keeps a copy-on-write snapshot of email that users modify.
  • The Exchange 2010 dumpster still operates with a retention period (14-day default) or custom. The new dumpster features are a welcome addition to Exchange.

By capturing all deleted items and preventing users from purging email, it closes two major “leaks” for email retention and compliance.

… Bob Spurzem

A growing number of businesses use Twitter for advertising. This recent Wall Street Journal article elaborates.

It is very easy to sign up for a Twitter account, and it costs nothing. Each post has a maximum of 140 characters, so the message is very brief. To find a person or brand name to follow, simply search for the name and then click the “follow” button.

I use Twitter to follow the SharePoint brand name. I receive information on events, product changes, and trends. I have found the content in Twitter to be useful in some cases; for example, a link to an interesting article or news about a upcoming event. But the majority of the information I receive is useless.

And therein lies the secret for using Twitter. Always strive to submit content that is meaningful and useful for readers. Who wants to read this real excerpt: “Friday – what do I want to focus on today?”

…Bob Spurzem

The next major version of Exchange, Exchange 2010, introduces a valuable new concept called a Database Availability Group (DAG). A DAG is group of up to 16 mailbox servers that use continuous replication to update database copies, communicate to manage failures that affect individual databases, and can provide automatic recovery from a variety of failures. A database copy is a single mailbox database with its own transaction logs. Storage Groups no longer exist in Exchange 2010. Exchange 2010 supports a maximum of 100 Mailbox Databases per server. Just like in the past, the size of each database is unlimited, but best practice is to limit size so recovery time is optimal.

DAGs are part of the Exchange 2010 high availability solution which now provides database-level failover. Each Mailbox Database can have up to 16 copies. Exchange will manage the replication of data automatically between the database copies to keep data consistent. Replication is based on the transaction log files, similar to how Exchange 2007 used logs files with LCR, SCR, and CCR, which by the way are discontinued in Exchange 2010. By having multiple copies of each database, traditional Exchange backup is no longer a necessity. Should a hardware failure occur, Exchange can simply mount one of the database copies. According to Microsoft, failover time is less than 30 seconds.

… Bob Spurzem