Microsoft recently announced that Exchange 2007 SP2 has been slated for release later this year. Exchange Server 2007 SP2 enables customers to increase their operational efficiency and it sets the foundation for the transition to Exchange Server 2010, which is expected to be available in the second half of 2009. In case you haven’t heard, a public beta of Exchange Server 2010 is available for download here

Key new features of Exchange Server 2007 SP2 include:

• Enhanced Auditing
• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation
• Public Folder Quota Management
• Centralized Organizational Settings
• Named Properties cmdlets
• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging
• Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality

The last feature is worth expanding on as it has been the subject of much discussion. Exchange 2007 SP2 will ship with a backup plug-in that will enable Windows Server Backup to backup Exchange data. A few things worth noting about this are:

• The backup is volume-based and as such there is no specific "Exchange only" granularity
• Only VSS backups are supported
• The backup will support backing up to a local hard disk or network share
• There is no remote server backup functionality
• The plug-in supports only full backups of the active copy if using CCR
• When restoring, you do not have to restore the whole backed up volume, but can choose to restore only Exchange application data
• Recovery can be done either in-place or out of place
• You will be able to open different "backup sets", even if they were created on servers different than the one where you are restoring

Detailed documentation will be available when SP2 ships, but for more detailed information, check out this post on the Exchange Team Blog

For more detailed information about Exchange 2007 SP2, click here