Optimizing the Global Catalog for Exchange Users in Branch Offices

 

If you run Exchange Server 2003 in a large branch office environment, you may need to optimize your environment to get the best efficiency and performance. Ideally, Exchange users in a large branch office environment should always have LAN-speed access to a global catalog server.

In a distributed or branch office deployment of Exchange that contains a large number of routing groups leaving this attribute as non-indexed can cause performance degradation. For example, if there are hundreds of routing groups in your Exchange organization, you may notice increased activity on one or more global catalog servers every 15 minutes. This increased activity occurs because the Directory Service Access (DSAccess) component in Exchange re-reads the routing group configuration. In severe cases, the global catalog may become consumed with this activity.

To minimize the burden, you can index the Routing Group Back-Link attribute () in the Active Directory® directory service, thereby reducing the time it takes for DSAccess to read the routing group information, as well as reducing the burden placed on the global catalog by this activity. For detailed instructions about how to index an attribute in Active Directory, see How to Index an Attribute in Active Directory.