1)      Managed Availability in Exchange 2013

In Exchange 2013, native, built-in monitoring and recovery actions are included in a feature called Managed Availability.

Managed Availability is the integration of built-in, active monitoring and recovering any issues of its own without any admin help and the Exchange 2013 high availability platform,allowing Exchange to make a determination on when to fail over a database based on service health.

To view the health of a server, you use the cmdlets Get-ServerHealth to retrieve the raw health data and Get-HealthReport that operates on the raw health data and provides a snapshot of the health

2)      Managed Store in Exchange 2013

This is a replacement for Information store in  earlier versions

Microsoft Exchange 2013 Managed Store is a mechanism used in Exchange Server 2013 to isolate failures at the database level.

The Managed Store in Exchange 2013 replaces the Exchange Information Store of past versions. The primary benefit of the

Exchange 2013 Managed Store is that if a single database process encounters any sort of error, only that database is affected. That said, the Managed Store also presents numerous enhancements over the Information Store, including:

 

•Improved integration with the Exchange Replication service,

•Better performance and resilience,

•Improved integration with Microsoft FAST search.

The Exchange 2013 Managed Store also reduces the number of potentially mounted databases per mailbox server from 100 (Exchange 2010) to 50 (Exchange 2013). This change should aid companies that rely on database availability groups (DAGs) as part of their general Exchange Server infrastructure.

3)      Safety net in Exchange 2013

Transport Dumpster  is replaced with Safety Net in Exchange 2013 unlike the earlier versions.

It prevents data loss by maintaining a queue of successfully delivered messages. Unlike the earlier version of transport dumpster It also holds emails of mailbox not a member of DAG and also public folders.

4)      Public Folders

There is no more public folders in exchange 2013.Instead the public folders are created  and associated to a parent public folder mailbox. There is no separate public folder DB in exchange 2013.Discussions can be stored, indexed, and searched

5)      Exchange Administration Center

The GUI-based EMC (Exchange Management Console) and the Web-based ECP (Exchange Control Panel) are being replaced by a single Web-based UI.No GUI and it’s an web based application.

 

6)      Exchange architecture revisions:

Exchange 2007 and 2010 are broken into five server roles, mainly to address performance issues like CPU performance, which would suffer if Exchange were running as one monolithic application. But Microsoft has made progress on the performance side, so Exchange 2013 has just two roles: Client Access server role and Mailbox server role. The Mailbox server role includes all the typical server components (including unified messaging), and the Client Access server role handles all the authentication, redirection, and proxy services. You can deploy Exchange 2013 with an Exchange 2010 Edge Transport server role but a 2013 Edge role is planned post-RTM.

7)      Storage Architecture

The sizing recommendations for Exchange 2010 and 2013 are the same, maximum of 2TB per database.

In 2013, the number of databases you can mount have changed, 5 in Std, but only 50 in Enterprise Exchange 2013. It is 100 in 2010 Enterprise.

 

8)      Transport Architecture

Divided into three Front End Transport service, Transport service, Mailbox Transport Service

•Front End Transport service :  This service runs on all Client Access servers and acts as a stateless proxy for all inbound and outbound external SMTP traffic for the Exchange 2013 organization. The Front End Transport service doesn’t inspect message content, only communicates with the Transport service on a Mailbox server, and doesn’t queue any messages locally.

 

•Transport service   This service runs on all Mailbox servers and is virtually identical to the Hub Transport server role in previous versions of Exchange. The Transport service handles all SMTP mail flow for the organization, performs message categorization, and performs message content inspection. Unlike previous versions of Exchange, the Transport service nevercommunicates directly with mailbox databases.

 

•Mailbox Transport service   This service runs on all Mailbox servers and consists of two separate services: the Mailbox

Transport Submission service and Mailbox Transport Delivery service. The Mailbox Transport Delivery service receives SMTPmessages from the Transport service on the local Mailbox server or on other Mailbox servers, and connects to the localmailbox database using an Exchange remote procedure call (RPC) to deliver the message.

 

9)      Client Access Server Change

Outlook Connectivity:

CAS supports only RPC/HTTP (aka Outlook Anywhere). This architecture change is primarily to drive a

stable and reliable connectivity model.

The Exchange 2013 Client Access Server role simplifies the network layer. Session affinity at the load balancer is no longer required as CAS2013 handles the affinity aspects. CAS2013 introduces more deployment flexibility by allowing you to simplify your namespace architecture, potentially consolidating to a single world-wide or regional namespace for your Internet protocols. The new architecture also simplifies the upgrade and inter-operability story as CAS2013 can proxy or redirect to multiple versions of Exchange, whether they are a higher or lower version, allowing you to upgrade your Mailbox servers at your own pace.

 

10)   Changes in Active Sync

New Exchange ActiveSync provides more additional  following features:

•Support for HTML messages

•Support for follow-up flags

•Conversation grouping of email messages

•Ability to synchronize or not synchronize an entire conversation

•Synchronization of Short Message Service (SMS) messages with a user’s Exchange mailbox

•Support for viewing message reply status

•Support for fast message retrieval

•Meeting attendee information

•Enhanced Exchange Search

•PIN reset

•Enhanced device security through password policies

•Auto discover for over-the-air provisioning

•Support for setting automatic replies when users are away, on vacation, or out of the office

•Support for task synchronization

•Direct Push

•Support for availability information for contacts

 

11)   Outlook Web Access Replaced with outlook web app

Outlook Web App, or OWA, is completely revamped, with a new look and the ability to access it offline as a real mail client. Outlook is the rich desktop client; OWA is also a client but runs over the Web. The new OWA is also designed to be more suitable for touch interfaces, which makes it more appealing for smartphones and tablet devices.

12)   Retired Tools

Mail flow, performance troubleshooters and Exchange Best Practices Analyzer have been retired and no longer

13)   Data loss protection (DLP) in Exchange 2013

Data loss protection (DLP) is a feature that is built into the Exchange platform. A powerful tool to reduce the amount of sensitive data that leaks outside of the boundaries of the organization is written directly into the new transport rules.

This allows you to set up policies that do one or more of the following:

Enforce boundaries by preventing or limiting transmissions between groups of users, including between groups internal to a company

Apply different treatment to messages sent inside a company from messages sent outside of a company

Stop inappropriate content from coming into a company or leaving it.

Strip out confidential or otherwise sensitive data from transmissions

Archive or journal messages that are sent to or received from users or a group of users

Catch inbound and outbound messages and route them to a manager or administrator for inspection and approval prior to final delivery.

Add disclaimers to messages as they enter or leave the mail flow

 

14)   CDO/MAPI download for Exchange 2013

 

There is no support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to communicate with Exchange Server 2013. The CDO/MAPI download is not yet available for Exchange 2013 and is “likely the primary reason” BES support is not yet available.Mobile devices can be supported Unless you are using a third-party solution that rides on top of ActiveSync.

15)   New in In-Place eDiscovery & Hold in Exchange 2013

Multi-Mailbox Search is known as In-Place eDiscovery.In Exchange Server 2010 and Office 365, Litigation Hold makes it possible to preserve mailbox items. When a user or a process attempts to delete an item permanently, it is removed from the user’s view to an inaccessible location in the mailbox. Additionally, when a user or a process modifies an item, a Copy-on-write (COW) is performed and a copy of the original item is saved right before the changed version is committed, preserving original content. The process is repeated for every change, preserving a copy of all subsequent versions.

The ability to give end users a tool to perform eDiscovery searches without the need for IT is great. Please refer the below blog.

References: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/09/26/in-place-e-discovery-and-in-place-hold-in-the-new-exchange.aspx