Welcome Back to the Exchange 5.5 Administrative Model…Part 2

Authors Notes: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is far too complex and in-depth an application to give full airing to within this forum. Therefore, I will give a broad overview of the application and it functionality.

I administer the medium-sized Exchange Server 2003 installation at my current company. Our installation is pretty straight forward and no doubt typical of the way Exchange 2003 is setup and administered in an Enterprise setting. We have both Exchange Server 2003 Standard and Enterprise boxes, and the business is in the process of moving to Microsoft’s newest messaging platform, Exchange Server 2007 planned and implemented by yours truly.

There are two distinct versions of Exchange Server 2007: Standard and Enterprise. The version you choose to install is based in whole or in part on your particular networking environment, user base, and the size of your organization. Microsoft ships the retail version of Exchange in x64-bit versions only; the trial version can be downloaded in x32-bit version but it like all Microsoft trial versions, it is good for only 180 days.

For this new version of Exchange, Microsoft has completely redesigned the application, breaking the products functionality into five separate modules:

o Mailbox server role functionality: manages access to the database that contains users’ mailboxes and public folders. Note: Mailbox server does not transfer message between mailboxes. Hub Transfer servers manage all message transfers.

o Client Access (CA) server role functionality: supports Microsoft Outlook Web Access, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®, Outlook Anywhere (RPC/HTTPS), POP3, and Internet Message Protocol 4 (IMAP4) protocol connections.

o Hub Transport server role: processes all mail sent throughout the exchange server organization before they are delivered to a recipient(s) inside the organization or routed to recipient(s) outside the organization. In addition the Hub Transport server can be configured to provide the following additional functionality:

o antivirus and anti-spam filtering via Microsoft Forefront, and;
o message policy compliance via a transport rules agent and journaling agent

o Edge Transport server role: accepts all email coming into an Exchange Server 2007 organization from the Internet and from other external organizations. It also routes all outbound messages to the Internet. The Edge Transport server role routes all accepted inbound messages to a Hub Transport server inside the organization. In addition, the Edge Transport server provides antivirus and anti-spam filtering via Microsoft Forefront as well as address re-writing.

o Unified Messaging server role: provides the following functionality:

o Call answering;
o Fax receiving;
o Subscriber Access;
o Auto Attendant.

Note: three of the five modules, the Hub Transport, Client Access, and Mailbox have to be installed in Exchange installation.

For our implementation I installed three server with Exchange 2007 Standard Edition and two servers with Exchange 2007 Enterprise Edition. For the purposes of this review I will limit myself to the discussion of the Enterprise edition. Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition (Exch2007 Ent. Ed.) is designed for large enterprise corporations, enables creation of multiple storage groups and databases, and the implementation of one of many mailbox replication models. Exch2007 Ent. Ed. offers the following features:

o Support for up to (50) storage groups
o Support for up to 50 databases
o Database storage Limit: 16TB per database
o Support for Single Copy Clusters (SCC)
o Support for Local Continuous Replication (LCR)
o Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR)
o Support for Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) (via SP1 Only)
o Exchange ActiveSync
o Exchange Outlook Web Access

Other Changes

If the introduction of Exchange 2000 marked a dramatic departure from Exchange 5.5 functionality, directory services, and administration, Exch2007 Ent. Ed. marks a march back to the functional model of Exchange 5.5; i.e. mailbox administration has been moved back to the Exchange organization and out of AD.
In Exchange 5.5 user mailboxes were treated as objects, separate from the users network account; this functionality was moved to AD when Exchange 2000 was rolled out. Under Exchange 2000 the mailbox object has been fused with the user object so that there was a single managed object; i.e. the mailbox administrative points have been folded under the user object in AD simplifying administration. Under Exch2007 Ent. Ed. Microsoft moved this functional administration back to Exchange; i.e. AD users and mailboxes can be created through the Exchange Management Console or the new Exchange Management Shell (command prompt).

Installation Notes

Like the installation of Exch2007 Ent. Ed., installing an instance of Exch2007 Ent. Ed. is no small feat. As in any large-scale application rollout proper planning needs to be implemented, and a through project plan put into place. This can even be true is you are just replacing a single server in an existing cluster, or building a single instance of Exch2007 Ent. Ed. I installed Exchange in a co-existent mode with Exchange 2003, wherein the two environments operate separately but can pass mailbox data and message back and forth seamlessly.

Installation Note (1): The Exch2007 Ent. Ed. installation process will modify the ADS forest schema even if you are installing just one server into your environment. This is true even if there is an active installation of Exchange 2003 in place.

Installation Note (2): The Exch2007 Ent. Ed. installation process will need to run Domain Prep for each domain you wish to install Exch2007 Ent. Ed. In. Microsoft recommends you do a Domain Prep on any domain in the forest you anticipate you might install Exch2007 Ent. Ed. Domain Prep must be run even if there is an active installation of Exchange 2003 in place.

Exchange Administration

As I mentioned above the Exchange Management Shell, based on Windows Powershell 1.0, is new to Exch2007 Ent. Ed. and introduces the command environment to Exchange. So now there are two ways to administer the messaging organization: the Management Shell and the Management Console. All Exchange administration functionality can be carried out through the Management Shell, but be forewarned there is scarce documentation on the syntax of the specific commands, so I prefer the Management Console.

But there are some pretty powerful commands that can only be carried out via the Management Shell; e.g. commands that touch every mailbox in the organization can only be accomplished via the Get-Mailbox commandlet, so I have become well acquainted with the Management Shell.

As I mentioned above, mailbox creation is accomplished in Exchange and not Windows 2003 Active Directory Users & Computers (ADUC). User accounts can be created in ADUC, but under Exchange 2007, mailboxes can no longer be created and or administered there.

Clustering Technologies

Disaster recovery is always a concern in an enterprise environment, and ours is no different. There are four primary options for high availability with Exch2007 Ent. Ed.: Local Continuous Replication (LCR), Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR), and Single Copy Clusters (SCC). All of these solutions provide varying degrees of high availability, so not all solutions are equal-and not all solutions involve clustering.

I designed our Exchange 2007 mailbox servers to utilize SCC with (2) mailbox servers running Exch2007 Ent. Ed. Underlying SCC is the standard Windows 2003 Enterprise edition clustering technologies (with active/passive nodes), upon which Exchange applies SSC. Single Copy Clusters can avail itself of SAN, NAS, or attached fiber array storage with RAID-Level redundancy and uses a simple fail-over model for disaster recovery of the mailbox databases.

Once installed with Exch2007 Ent. Ed. fail-over can be initiated via the Windows 2003 cluster administrator, or within the Exchange 2007 environment via either the Management Shell or Management Console.

Conclusion

E-mail has become an integral part of business, both large and small. And while small business can rely on internet based e-mail such as Yahoo.com, Earthlink.net, Gmail.com, etc, larger concerns need and rely on dedicated in-house multi-functional messaging solutions, which provide email services within and without the organization. Microsoft Exch2007 Ent. Ed. with its tight integration with Windows 2003 ADS and Microsoft Outlook messaging client offers the right balance of performance and scalability to allow your organization to compete in this competitive information age.

There are of course other messaging programs on the market, but if you use the Microsoft Office suite and consequently, Microsoft Outlook, the choice is pretty clear. And as Exchange continues to mature, competitors are increasing fading into the distance.