Exchange System Manager on an RPC Proxy Server That is a Front-End Server

  • Article

 

In Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, you can use Exchange System Manager to configure a front-end server as an RPC over HTTP front-end server. You must have already configured the server as a front-end server for the RPC over HTTP front-end server role to apply. When you select a front-end server to be an RPC over HTTP front-end server, Exchange System Manager performs the following actions:

  • It verifies that you have installed the RPC proxy component.

  • It locks down the RPC virtual directory in Internet Information Services (IIS) with the correct permissions.

  • It changes the error responses for the RPC virtual directory to text-only error codes. Exchange System Manager changes the error responses to reduce the amount of network traffic. The error responses for the RPC virtual directory never appear in a browser. Therefore, by changing them to be text-only, you reduce the number of bytes that are sent over the network. Additionally, NTLM authentication always generates 401 Access denied messages as part of its challenge/response. Therefore, by reducing the size of the responses, you can accelerate NTLM authentication.

Exchange System Manager checks to see whether RPC over HTTP was ever configured on this server. If RPC over HTTP was configured in the past, Exchange System Manager notifies you that it will back up the previous configuration to a location on the server. After all the checks have passed, Exchange System Manager sets a bit on the Exchange Server object in the Active Directory® directory service. The bit identifies the server as an RPC over HTTP front-end server. After the Exchange System Manager has set this bit, Exchange System Manager displays the server as an RPC over HTTP front-end server in the Exchange System Manager user interface.