We as administrators faced many challenges when it comes to branch deployment. In the current economic climate every company cannot afford to have high bandwidth in all the branch officers they have. So as administrators we had to face all the practical issue to fight with available limited band with.
So now with Windows 7, Microsoft is introducing a new feature called “BranchCache”
Simply it will helps to increase the network responsiveness of applications, giving users in remote offices an experience more like working in the head office. When accessing content stored on Windows Server 2008 R2, users in a branch office don't need to wait as long to download files from headquarters. When IT enables BranchCache, a copy of data accessed from an intranet web site or a file server is cached locally within the branch office. When another user on the same network requests the file, the user gets access to the content almost immediately as it is downloaded from the local cache rather than over a limited bandwidth connection back to headquarters.
There are 2 way’s you can implement this feature,
Enable BranchCash in Windows Server 2008 R2 server located in Branch office, that we call “Hosted Cash Mode” or “Distributed Cash mode” where you do not required a Windows 2008 R2 Server in Branch office, in this mode files are directly cached on PCs in the branch and sent to other Windows 7 clients as needed. BranchCache only serves content to users who have the right permissions and always checks to make sure it is delivering the latest version of the file.
For more information http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/branchcache.aspx
Exchange 2010 team has introduced a pretty interesting end user feature in their upcoming next release of exchange. It call Mail tip.
Basically it gives the end user few tips before user send out a mail. Here are few tips they introduce in Beta version of Exchange 2010.
Automatic replies – This Tip will show you, when a Recipient have set his/her automatic reply when their on vacation or leave. So that when you select the person in “To” filed you will see a message appearing like this
Recipient Count – This Tip will show you how many recipient will receive your mail, this tip is very useful when you select Groups or distribution list, generally we don’t have any idea how many people are in distribution lists and we really don’t care, but it’s a good thing if we know how many people are going to receive my mail and the impact am going to make.
External recipients – This Tip will show you if you have sleeted any external Parties in to “To” filed with internal users, so it’s good if you’re sending a confidential mail and accidentally you have selected a outsider who has similar name like a internal employee.
Mailbox full – Most of the time we get return mails with mailbox full error message, here is the solution for that, you can see recipient mailbox is full before you send the mail out
Oversized message: This Tip is displayed when composing a message that exceeds size limits within your Organization.
Restricted recipient: If you don't have permission to send to a mailbox or distribution list, there will be a MailTip Displaying a message
Invalid recipient: if the Recipient address in invalid, it will display a message, this will mostly helpful when employees leave the company and their mailbox is been disabled but still the will be appearing in your outlook auto complete, even you mistakenly select that user, this Tip will help you to avoid bouncing emails.
According to the blog posts and Microsoft this feature will add 5% extra load to the CAS server and still exchange team is trying to reduce it further, am sure 5% is a acceptable thing when you compare the benefits you’re going to gain out of this