Both Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 provide distribution groups. Distribution groups are mail-enabled groups that can contain any number of e-mail recipients. When a sender sends a message to a distribution group, the server takes the original message, accesses the distribution group membership, and sends the message to each recipient in the membership list. This process is known as distribution group expansion.
In both Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007, you can specify which servers perform distribution group expansion. By default, Exchange 2007 distribution groups are configured to use any Hub Transport server as a distribution group expansion server. By default, in Exchange 2003, any server can act as a distribution group expansion server.
However, you can configure distribution groups individually to use specific servers as distribution group expansion servers. This is typically done to optimize server and network traffic load.
When you install Exchange 2007 into an existing Exchange 2003 organization where an expansion server is used by distribution groups, and journaling is performed, configure all distribution groups to use Exchange 2007 Hub Transport servers as distribution group expansion servers. Messages are not journaled, even if the recipients are configured for journaling, if the following conditions are true:
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Exchange 2007 recipients are configured for journaling.
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Exchange 2007 recipients are included in a distribution group.
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The distribution group is configured to use an Exchange 2003 distribution list expansion server.
For example, assume that the Sales distribution group includes Exchange 2007 recipients and that it is configured to use an Exchange 2003 distribution list expansion server. In this case, when an Exchange 2007 sender sends a message to the Sales distribution group, the following events occur:
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The message is sent to a Hub Transport server.
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Because the Sales distribution group is not configured to use a Hub Transport server as the distribution group expansion server, the journal rules in the Exchange 2007 organization cannot access the distribution group recipients. Therefore, no journal rules can be applied to the recipients in the distribution group.
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The message is routed to the Exchange 2003 server for expansion.
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The Exchange 2003 server expands the distribution group. Because the Exchange 2003 server cannot access the Exchange 2007 journal rule configuration, no messages are journaled.
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The Exchange 2003 server routes the expanded messages back to the Exchange 2007 Hub Transport server for delivery to the Exchange 2007 recipients.
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The Hub Transport receives the message. Because this is not the first server to route these messages, the Hub Transport server assumes the messages have already been evaluated for journaling and the journal rules are not applied.