NHS Organisations running Exchange 2013

[Guest ZFarnworth]

Hi all.

 

I've seen many NHS organizations running Local exchange 2013 and I've been thinking they have a Local IT Team but why cant they upgrade after the Cyber attacks on schools and the NHS!

 

Anyone know why if they have an IT Team?

 

 

Zak

[maark]

I don't really understand why anyone runs exchange any more - I got rid of it ten years ago at a school - just use office 365 or gmail.

[NokiX]

I can't speak for every situation however an old colleague of mine moved into the network engineer side of a hospital a number of years ago and from what I understand they can never get approval for any downtime so systems basically end up being run into the ground.

 

A good example is the stacks of "new" switches they had in a storage room which were never deployed simply because they needed a small amount of downtime to actually tidy up the mess that is the existing setup so they end up having to simply maintain what's there and replace units only when and if they fail. Honestly it'd drive me insane so I'm glad I never went down the route of IT in the NHS!

 

Edit: Also remembered, you can bet there's a tonne of proprietary software that has to be considered which also delays any upgrades.

Edited December 27, 2021 by NokiX

[kxv2020]

All NHS organisations have access to NHSmail which is 365. https://portal.nhs.net/

[3s-gtech]

We run Exchange 2016 (alas, not 2013), patched up and lovely.

 

Why does this make you sad? 🧐

 

It’s now a hybrid to give me easy control of mailboxes on O365, as a halfway house to full cloud mail.

 

It’ll never be replaced with a 2019 or 2022 server (read into that its lifespan), but it works really well.

 

As long as it’s patched, it’s fine (apart from ZDs of course [emoji32])

[Guest ZFarnworth]

Yeah I can understand why it must be hard to upgrade equipment in the NHS. I do however know that NHSmail has problems know and again though with mail delivery and filtering! But glad to hear from people who know more insider information than me!

[free780]

It's a big project to upgrade to a new version of exchange. You also may need on prem exchange for compliance reasons. You don't know which apps are using the existing servers. If the patches are kept up to date and some decent antimalware software is deployed the servers should suitably protected.

 

You also are required to use exchange for some admin tasks even in a hybrid deployment.

 

Ideally don't nt expose your exchange servers to the Internet if you don't need to.

 

Not sure when Exchange 2013 is EOL though.

Edited December 27, 2021 by free780

[MatthewL]

The NHS Mail option is available to all trusts, all have access to it but some won't make the move over to it fully.

 

It's one less thing to worry about, its all O365 based now too.

 

For years many secondary trusts were light years behind in systems but the fact certain things have to be reported in now does make them move with the times. Interesting watching the "league tables" as such come through when it comes through regarding security etc.

[Jcx500]

Like others have mentioned it’s hard to get downtime approved, these places run 24/7/365 and email is a core part of their infrastructure and communication

[Guest ZFarnworth]

I've had a full day of problems today with Exchange whilst ive been talking about this on the forum! SPF Records, IP's and then the Exchange server went down randomly. Had a full day of it but Exchange should be ready to be put back into production Hopefully.

 

Office 365 here I come!

[3s-gtech]

I've had a full day of problems today with Exchange whilst ive been talking about this on the forum! SPF Records, IP's and then the Exchange server went down randomly. Had a full day of it but Exchange should be ready to be put back into production Hopefully.

 

Office 365 here I come!

 

When it plays up, it really is a complete nightmare! Complex and unwieldy. VM with snapshots/bare metal is a start but even that doesn’t always fix it.

[Guest ZFarnworth]

I know, Its been such a pain today I'm still on 2013 and planning 2016 next year in January and I think I'd hate to be a NHS org still running it and having no way of upgrading due to no downtime. I'm all patched up and only have the required ports open for it and that's it. Its such a pain sometimes!

[DrCheese]

If you're only using it to manage hybrid mailboxes then it's safe to just close off the external ports to it. I just have to remote onto the system now instead.

[ITGURU]

Nothing wrong with exchange - things happen quicker than in the cloud when making changes. Been running on-site exchange since the days of exchange 2000, now running 2 server DAG setup. Highly reliable and can update/patch one server and users don't even know its being done as no knock on effect to OWA or outlook access.

Guess one day i'll have to migrate but for now, keeping as is.

[Guest ZFarnworth]

Decided to move over a few mailboxes to office 365 as that's been our plan. I'm moving my own mailbox over and then Ill move over a few users. going to deploy adfs as I like to have a sign in page for Cloud services and then done until the full move.

[Guest ZFarnworth]

Working late tonight, My Office and building will be locked up later tonight but for now its time to move to o365 for 5 users!