•
Exchange Server 2003 core components
•
Optional Exchange Server 2003 components
•
Clients for Exchange
•
Key Exchange Server 2003 Organizing Components
Every system, whether social, biological, or computer, needs a set of organizing components. Without these components, you'll have a devil of a time understanding or working with the system. Here's a highly
simplified example using social organizations. We think of social organizations as having groups, and groups as having individual members. When we attempt to work within social organizations, it's very important to remember those groups because people often learn to behave and actually behave as group members, not as individual persons.
Like Exchange 2000 Server, Exchange Server 2003 has its own set of key organizing components. These are borrowed from Exchange Server 5.5, but a lot happened to 5.5 on the way to 2003. Let's take a look at the organizing components of Exchange Server. We'll start with Exchange Server 5.5 and then see how these components were or were not modified in Exchange Server 2003.
The key organizing components of Exchange Server 5.5 included organizations, sites, messaging servers, and message recipients (objects that can at least receive messages). In Exchange Server 5.5, those four
components formed a hierarchy: Organizations contained sites.
•
Sites contained messaging servers.
•
Messaging servers contained message recipients.
•
An Exchange organization encompassed an Exchange Server 5.5 system that was a collection of servers in one or more sites. Think of an Exchange organization as Exchange Server 5.5's forest, in Windows Server 2003 parlance. Recipients in 5.5 included mailboxes, distribution lists, custom addresses (e−mail addresses outside the Exchange system), and public folders. Figure 4.1 shows the organizing components of Exchange Server 5.5.
Figure 4.1: Exchange Server 5.5's organizing components
All is not quite so simple with Exchange Server 2003. All four of the organizational components are still around, but although most have retained homes in Exchange Server 2003, a few have moved at least in part to Windows Server 2003. Exchange organizations, messaging servers, and public folders (the only type of message recipients that remain organizationally in Exchange) are a part of Exchange Server 2003.
Sites are now a part of Windows Server 2003, where they function similarly to the way they did in Exchange 5.5. However, they no longer have anything to do with Exchange. In Exchange Server 2003, administrative groups and routing groups replace sites. I'll talk more about administrative groups soon; I discussed routing groups back in Chapter 2, 'Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003.'
The four types of recipients in Exchange 2003 are as follows:
Exchange users (mailbox−enabled users and mail−enabled users)
•
Distribution groups or mail−enabled groups (distribution lists in Exchange 5.5)
•
Contacts (custom recipients in Exchange 5.5)
•
Public folders
•
A mailbox−enabled user is a Windows 2003 user (account) with an Exchange mailbox. A mail− enabled user is a Windows 2003 user that has no Exchange mailbox, but does have an address in a foreign messaging system. See Figure 4.2 for a graphic representation of this state of affairs.
Figure 4.2: Exchange Server 2003's organizing components with a little help from Windows Server 2003 'Wow!' you say. 'That's a pretty bifurcated messaging mess.' It's really not all that bad. If you're an old hand at
Exchange Server 2003, no matter where they live. So, for the sake of this discussion, let's agree to treat all four kinds of recipients together. We probably shouldn't try to shoehorn them into the Exchange Server 2003 organizational hierarchy, but we can still talk about them in the same breath as the hierarchy.
You can see the hierarchy in Exchange Server 5.5's Administrator program. Figure 4.3 shows the hierarchy of one Exchange organization in the 5.5 Administrator program. GerCom is the name of the Exchange
organization. LA is the name of the Exchange site. The Exchange servers are called EXCHLA01 and EXCHLA02. All recipients in a site can be viewed in the Recipients container at the bottom of the screen. You can see all four kinds of recipients in the Recipients container, mailboxes (Easton, David), distribution lists (Dead Letter Managers), custom recipients (Franklin, Marsha), and public folders (Johnson Party (Feb).
Figure 4.3: The Exchange Server 5.5 hierarchy as viewed through the Exchange Administrator program In Exchange Server 5.5, mailboxes resided on one and only one Exchange server. So, if you looked in the container labeled Server Recipients under any of the Exchange servers in Figure 4.3, you'd see the mailboxes that resided on that server. When you set up an Exchange Server 5.5 mailbox, you could designate the Exchange server where the mailbox would live. Public folders also lived on an Exchange 5.5 server, although they could be replicated to other servers. Exchange Server 5.5 distribution lists and custom recipients lived only in the Exchange directory, which could be replicated across Exchange Server 5.5 servers. Hold these thoughts: Most of this is still true with Exchange Server 2003.
Figure 4.4 shows how my Exchange 2003 environment looks in the Exchange Server 2003 System Manager snap−in for Windows Server 2003's Microsoft Management Console. My organization (Barry Gerber and Associates) includes my administrative groups (there's only one right now, First Administrative Group). My administrative group includes my Exchange servers (again, only one right now, EXCHANGE01), and my Exchange server contains a public store that includes public folders. To work on public folders, I click Public Folder Instances, right−click the folder that I want to administer, and open its properties.
Figure 4.4: The Exchange Server 2003 hierarchy as viewed through the Exchange Server System Manager snap−in for Windows Server 2003's Microsoft Management Console
'Wait,' you say. 'Can't I do the same thing with mailboxes in the mailbox store right above the public store?' Nope. To administer mailboxes, you must use the Active Directory Users and Computers snap−in. That's why I say that recipients other than public folders are organizationally part of Windows Server 2003.
Warning If you've just installed Exchange Server 2003, your Exchange system manager snap−in won't look anything like the one in Figure 4.4. It'll look a lot more like the one in Figure 1.13 in Chapter 1, 'Introducing Exchange Server 2003.' You'll see a lot of the same stuff, but it won't be organized under administrative groups. You have to choose to view Administrative Groups before you can work with them. If you're accustomed to Exchange Server 5.5, where your first site was displayed automatically, you might have more trouble adjusting to this than a new Exchange Server 2003 user would. For now, don't worry. We're talking architecture here. I'll talk about displaying administrative group containers in Chapter 12, 'Managing the Exchange Server Hierarchy and Core
Components,' and we'll create some new administrative group containers in Chapter 15, 'Installing and Managing Additional Exchange Servers.'
There is no container for recipients in the Exchange snap−in. 'Wait,' you say once again. 'What about the container called Recipients that's just above Administrative Groups in Figure 4.4?' Well, that's a container for organization−wide recipient attributes such as addressing. You won't find mailboxes, distribution groups, contacts, and public folders there. Go to the public store in the Exchange system manager to administer public folders. Go to Windows 2003's Active Directory Users and Computers snap−in to administer Exchange users, distribution groups, and contacts.
Tip For many Exchange components, you can assign management permissions at the component level. For example, you can create administrative groups for different departments in your organization and assign different users management rights for each administrative group.
Figure 4.5 shows what's in the Users folder in the Active Directory Users and Computers snap−in. Barry Gerber in the right pane is a user. Users are Windows Server 2003 users. They have accounts that allow them to log into domains and access resources based on their permissions. You can mailbox− enable a Windows 2003 user while or after creating the user. You manage mailboxes when you manage the users with whom they are associated. In the figure, All Managers is a distribution group; Joe Blow, about three−quarters down in the right pane, is a contact.
Figure 4.5: Viewing Exchange Server 2003 recipients with the Active Directory Users and Computers snap−in for Microsoft Management Console
Not everything has changed with Exchange Server 2003 when compared with Exchange Server 5.5. For example, when you mailbox−enable a user, you still specify which Exchange 2003 server the user's mailbox will reside on. Public folders still reside on a single Exchange server and can be replicated to other Exchange servers. You can still see the mailboxes that reside on each server by looking in the server's mailbox store, EXCHANGE01\First Storage Group\Mailbox Store (EXCHANGE01) in Figure 4.4. Now, you can even see which public folders exist on a given Exchange server, EXCHANGE01\First Storage Group\Public Folder Store (EXCHANGE01) in Figure 4.4. Distribution groups (formerly distribution lists) and contacts (formerly custom recipients) continue to live only in a directory, but now they're in the Active Directory instead of the Exchange Server 5.5 directory.
So, in summary, Exchange Server 2003 includes four organizing components: Organizations • Administrative groups • Servers • Recipients: Exchange users ♦ Distribution groups ♦ Contacts ♦ Public folders ♦ •
Mailboxes live on Exchange 2003 servers and are managed in Active Directory. Distribution groups and contacts live on Windows 2003 servers in Active Directory and are managed using Active Directory−specific management tools. Public folders live on Exchange 2003 servers and are managed using Exchange−specific management tools.
Does an Object Live on Exchange Server 2003, Windows Server 2003, or Both?
What follows is very important. It will help you understand the difference between objects that live only in Windows Server 2003's Active Directory and objects that live both in Active Directory and someplace else, such as Exchange Server 2003. I strongly suggest you read this very carefully.
The first thing to understand is that all objects have a presence in the Active Directory namespace. Their attributes live in Active Directory. Some objects, such as distribution groups and contacts, live only in Active Directory. Some objects also have a presence in other places. For example, mailboxes live both on Windows 2003 servers in Active Directory and on Exchange 2003 servers.
When you manage the attributes of an object, such as a mailbox, you work in Active Directory. When you change attributes, you work solely in Active Directory because the attributes are stored in Active Directory. On the other hand, when you delete a mailbox, you still work in Active Directory to request the deletion, but your work affects both Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003. The mailbox object with all its attributes is deleted from the Active Directory namespace. At the same time, the actual physical mailbox is deleted from the Exchange server.
Make sense? Good. Remembering this distinction will see you through many a dark and stormy night.