Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Administration Essentials

Updated : August 4, 2001

This article is a sample chapter (Chapter 3) from Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server Administrator's Pocket Consultant, Part II: Active Directory Services and Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. In this chapter, we examine the essential concepts and tasks that you need to know to work with Exchange Server. To order a copy of the Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server Administrator's Pocket Consultant, go to https://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/4218.asp.

Whether you're using Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server for the first time or honing your skills, you'll need to master many key concepts in order to work effectively with Exchange Server. You'll need to know the following:

• How the Exchange environment is organized

• How information is stored in Exchange Server

• Which Microsoft Windows® processes are used with Exchange Server

• How Exchange Server works

You'll also need to know how to use the Exchange System Manager. These topics are all covered in this chapter.

On This Page

Understanding Exchange Server Organizations
Data Storage in Exchange Server
Using and Managing Exchange Server Services

Understanding Exchange Server Organizations

Exchange Server combines a fairly complex administrative model with an equally complex messaging architecture. Understanding how the administrative model and the messaging architecture are used and integrated isn't easy. So let's begin with a look at how Exchange environments are organized.

The root of an Exchange environment is an organization. It's the starting point for the Exchange hierarchy. The boundaries of the Exchange organization define the boundaries of your Exchange environment. In other words, the Exchange information store doesn't provide information on users or servers outside the organization - unless you specifically tell Exchange Server about these entities.

An Exchange organization can serve several offices and business functions. Typically, each office or business function that it supports has its own server that runs Exchange Server. For example, if your company has offices in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, you'll probably have at least one server running Exchange Server at each location. To serve a large user base or high-volume messaging needs, you may also have separate servers providing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP3), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and instant messaging services. All these servers can be a part of the same Exchange organization.

When you installed Exchange Server, you were given the opportunity to join an existing organization or to create a new organization. The organization name you assign or join is permanently associated with the Exchange server. Once designated, you cannot change it. As Figure 3-1 shows, you can view the current organization name in Exchange System Manager. Here, the organization name is My Organization.

Figure 3-1: The organization is the root of the Exchange environment, and you view it in Exchange System Manager.

Under the organization node you'll find the key components that make up the organization. These components include:

• Global Settings

• Recipients

• Administrative groups (which can contain Servers, Tools, and Folders)

• Routing groups

The following sections examine each of these Exchange components and explain how they fit into the organization.

Global Settings

Global settings apply to all servers and recipients in an organization. The three most common global settings that you'll work with are

• Internet Message Formats These global settings define the acceptable Internet message formats for the organization, as well as the way you can use message formats. The settings that you can define include default message encoding, default character sets, and default MIME extension mapping. Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is the standard used for messages with several parts.

• Message Delivery These global settings define how and when messages are delivered. The settings that you can define include the default postmaster account name, the default quotas, and the default message filters. Message filters allow you to discard messages from specific senders and to redirect messages based on who the sender is.

• Instant Messaging If you install instant messaging services in the organization and your organization uses firewalls, you'll use these global settings to describe the firewall topology and the HTTP proxy servers that are being used.

Recipients

A recipient is an entity that can receive Exchange mail. Recipients include users, contacts, groups, and other resources. You refer to recipients as either mailbox-enabled or mail-enabled. Mailbox-enabled recipients (users) have mailboxes for sending and receiving e-mail messages. Mail-enabled recipients (contacts and groups) have e-mail addresses but no mailboxes. Thus, mail-enabled recipients can receive messages but can't send them.

To manage recipients in your organization, you need to know these key concepts:

• How recipient policies are used Recipient policies define the technique Exchange uses to create addresses for SMTP, cc:Mail, Exchange Server, X.400, and so forth. For example, you can set a policy for SMTP that creates e-mail addresses by combining an e-mail alias with @domain.com. Thus, during setup of an account for William Stanek, the e-mail alias williams is combined with @domain.com to create the e-mail address williams@domain.com.

• How address lists are used You use address lists to organize recipients and resources, thus making it easier to find recipients and resources that you want to use, along with their related information. During setup, Exchange creates a number of default address lists. The most commonly used default address list is the global address list, which lists all the recipients in the organization. You can create custom address lists as well.

• How address templates are used Templates define the appearance of recipient information in the address book. When you install Exchange Server, default templates are set up for users, groups, contacts, public folders, search dialog boxes, and the mailbox agent. By modifying the appropriate template, you can change the appearance of recipient information in the address book.

Administrative Groups

Administrative groups define the logical structure of an Exchange organization. You use administrative groups to help you organize directory objects and efficiently manage Exchange resources. Administrative groups are best suited to large organizations or to organizations with offices in several locations. In a small- or medium-sized company, you may not need to use administrative groups at all.

Using and Enabling Administrative Groups

Another way to think of administrative groups is as logical containers into which you can place directory objects and Exchange resources. For example, you could create administrative groups named Engineering, Marketing, and Administration. Within these groups, you could then define routing groups, policies, servers, public folder trees, and other objects for each department.

When you install Exchange Server, administrative group support is disabled by default. This is done primarily to simplify the Exchange management process. In System Manager, the lack of the Administrative Group node tells you that administrative group support has been disabled. You can enable support for administrative groups by completing the following steps.

1. In System Manager, right-click the organization container, and then select Properties.

2. In the General tab of the Properties dialog box, select Display Administrative Groups.

3. When you click OK, Exchange Server enables administrative groups and configures them for the current operations mode.

Administrative Groups in Mixed Mode and Native Mode Operations

How you manage administrative groups depends on the operations mode in use. Exchange Server has two operations modes:

• Mixed mode When operating in mixed mode, Exchange 2000 Server can support Exchange Server 5.0, Exchange Server 5.5, and Exchange 2000 installations.

• Native mode When operating in native mode, Exchange 2000 Server supports only Exchange 2000 installations.

Using Mixed-Mode Operations By default, when you install Exchange Server, the operations mode is set to mixed. The mixed-mode configuration provides for interoperability with Exchanger 5.0 and Exchanger 5.5 but limits the capabilities of Exchange 2000 Server. These limitations directly affect the way administrative groups are used and effectively force Exchange 2000 Server to handle administrative groups in the same way that Exchanger 5.5 handles sites.

When running in mixed-mode operations, Exchange 2000 Server operates as follows:

• When Exchange 2000 Server coexists with Exchange 5.x, Exchange 2000 Server uses the site concept to define both administration and routing. This limitation means that each administrative group has only one functional routing group even if you create additional routing groups.

• You can't move mailboxes from a server in one administrative group to a server in another administrative group. This limitation reduces your flexibility in managing mailboxes.

Additional limitations apply if Exchange 2000 Server is installed in an Exchanger 5.5 site. These additional limitations are:

• Some System Manager commands don't apply to Exchanger 5.5. Because of this, you can't use these commands to manipulate an Exchanger 5.5 server.

• Exchanger 5.5 directory service objects are replicated into Active Directory directory service with read-only properties. This means you can't edit these properties through Active Directory. You will need to use the Exchange Administrator tool for this, which can be installed with Exchange Server.

Enabling and Using Native-Mode Operations When operating in native mode, Exchange 2000 Server isn't subject to these limitations. You can enable routing group support and create additional routing groups as necessary. It also means that Exchange 2000 Server won't be able to work with Exchanger 5.0 or Exchanger 5.5 sites that are part of the same organization; it is as if the Exchange 5.0 and Exchange 5.5 servers no longer exist.

t in the organization.

You can view and change the operations mode by completing the following steps.

1. In System Manager, right-click the Organization node, and then select Properties.

2. In the General tab of the Properties dialog box, the Operation Mode field displays the current operation mode as either Mixed Mode or Native Mode (see Figure 3-2).

3. To change the operation mode from mixed to native, click Change Mode. Confirm the action by clicking Yes. Once you change to native mode, you can't change back to mixed mode.

Figure 3-2: The General tab of the organization Properties dialog box displays the current operation mode. Be aware that once you change to native mode, you can't change back to mixed mode.

Routing Groups

You use routing groups in advanced Exchange installations where you need to control message connectivity and communication channels for groups of Exchange servers. When you install the first Exchange server in an organization, the server is added to the default routing group. You have no control over this routing group in mixed-mode operations. Additional servers installed in the Exchange organization are added to this same routing group by default and the message connectivity and communication among these servers is configured automatically.

If you have a single group of servers that have no special communication needs, you don't need to create additional routing groups. Normally, you use multiple routing groups when you need to connect branch offices or other geographically separated locations and when

• You don't have high-bandwidth connections among these locations.

• You have special connectivity requirements, such as the need to control precisely how and when Exchange data is transferred among these locations.

Once a server is connected to a particular routing group, you can't move it to another routing group without reinstalling Exchange Server. Because of this, you should plan the messaging topology for your organization very carefully. Message transfer and communication within routing groups is handled directly with a target server. Message transfer and communication among routing groups is handled by a bridgehead server.

A bridgehead server is the point of entry and exit for all message traffic among routing groups. Bridgehead servers also handle the link state information, which is used to determine optimal routing paths. You must designate a bridgehead server in each routing group. To communicate, bridgehead servers use an Exchange Server Routing Group Connector, which provides the direct connection among routing groups. You use one Routing Group Connector to connect two routing groups.

You can enable support for routing groups by completing the following steps:

1. In System Manager, right-click the organization container, and then select Properties.

2. In the General tab of the Properties dialog box, select Display Routing Groups.

3. When you click OK, Exchange enables routing groups and configures them for the current operations mode.

Data Storage in Exchange Server

Exchange Server stores information in two places:

• Active Directory data store

• Exchange Server information store

Working with the Active Directory Data Store

The Active Directory data store contains all directory information for recipients as well as other important directory resources. Domain controllers maintain the data store in a file called NTDS.DIT. The location of this file is set when Active Directory is installed and must be on an NTFS (NT file system) drive formatted for use with Microsoft Windows 2000. You can also save directory data separately from the main data store. This is true for some public data, such as logon scripts.

Two key concepts to focus on when looking at Active Directory are:

• Multimaster replication

• Global catalog servers

Using Multimaster Replication

Domain controllers replicate most changes to the data store by using multimaster replication, which allows any domain controller to process directory changes and replicate those changes to other domain controllers. Replication is handled automatically for key data types, including:

• Domain data Contains information about objects within a domain, such as users, groups, and contacts.

• Configuration data Describes the topology of the directory and includes a list of important domain information.

• Schema data Describes all objects and data types that can be stored in the data store.

Using Global Catalogs

Active Directory information is also made available through global catalogs. You use global catalogs during logon and for information searches. A domain controller designated as a global catalog stores a full replica of all objects in the data store (for its host domain).

By default, the first domain controller installed in a domain is designated as the global catalog. Consequently, if there is only one domain controller in the domain, the domain controller and the global catalog are on the same server. Otherwise, the global catalog is on the domain controller configured as such.

Information searches are one of the key uses of the global catalog. Searches in the global catalog are very efficient and can resolve most queries locally, thus reducing the network load and allowing for quicker responses.

Working with the Exchange Server Information Store

The Exchange information store contains mailbox and public folder data. To make the information store more manageable, Exchange 2000 Server allows you to organize the information store into multiple databases. You can then manage these databases individually or in logical groupings called storage groups.

Exchange Server uses transactions to control changes in storage groups. As with traditional databases, these transactions are recorded in a transaction log. Changes are then committed or rolled back based on the success of the transaction. In the case of failure, you can use the transaction log to restore the database. The facility that manages transactions is the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service (STORE.EXE).

When working with storage groups, you should keep the following in mind:

• Each Exchange server can have up to 16 storage groups (with one of the storage groups being reserved for database recovery operations).

• A single storage group can have up to 6 databases. Thus, the maximum number of databases that a single server can have is 96 (with 6 reserved for the recovery storage group).

Key concepts to focus on when looking at the Exchange information store and storage groups are:

• Exchange Database formats

• Single-instance message storage

• Files associated with storage groups

What Exchange Server Database Formats Are Available?

Exchange servers store databases in two files: a rich-text file with the .edb file extension and a streaming Internet content file with the .stm file extension. The .edb file contains message text and the .stm file contains attachments to these messages.

Because attachments are written in native format, there is no need to convert attachments to Exchange format (as was done in previous versions of Exchange). Exchange Server performs much better when reading and writing attachments in native format.

Two types of databases are available:

• Private store databases Contain mailboxes

• Public store databases Contain public folders

What Is Single-Instance Message Storage?

Exchange Server uses single-instance message storage on a per database basis. With this technique, a message that's sent to multiple mailboxes is

• Stored once if all the mailboxes are in the same database.

• Copied once to each database that contains a target mailbox.

Additionally, if the databases are in different storage groups, Exchange Server writes the message to each database as well as the transaction log set for each storage group. Thus, a message written to three databases that are in two different storage groups would use five times the disk space as a message written to a single database in a single storage group. To see this, consider the following example.

A 2-MB message is sent to all company employees. The mailboxes for these employees are in private stores A and B in storage group 1 and in private store C in storage group 2. Exchange Server writes the message to the transaction log in storage groups 1 and 2 and then writes to the private storage databases A, B, and C. So storing the original 2-MB messages requires 10 MB of disk space.

Note: Needing 10 MB of disk space to store a 2-MB message may sound like an awful lot of space, but remember the hidden savings. That 2-MB message may have been sent to 1000 employees, and without single-instance message storage, Exchange Server would use a whopping 2 GB of disk space.

What Files Are Associated with Storage Groups?

Each storage group on Exchange Server has several files associated with it. These files are:

• EDB.CHK A check file containing recovered file fragments

• EDB.LOG A transaction log file for the storage group

• RES1.LOG A reserved log file for the storage group

• RES2.LOG A reserved log file for the storage group

• TMP.EDB A temporary workspace for processing transactions

• DBName .EDB Rich-text database files for individual databases

• DBName .STM Streaming Internet content files for individual databases

To create a new storage group with a public store and a private store, you'll need about 50 MB of free disk space. The files required by the storage group use a minimum of 11 MB of disk space. The minimum disk space for private and public stores is 5 MB and 8 MB, respectively. Although the total disk space used is about 24 MB, you'll need the extra space during creation and for read/write operations.

Using and Managing Exchange Server Services

Each Exchange server in the organization relies on a set of services for routing messages, processing transactions, replicating data, and much more. To manage Exchange services, you'll use the Services node in the Computer Management console, which you start by completing the following steps.

1. Choose Start, choose Programs, choose Administrative Tools, and then select Computer Management. Or in the Administrative Tools folder, select Computer Management.

2. Right-click the Computer Management entry in the console tree, and on the shortcut menu, select Connect To Another Computer. You can now choose the Exchange server whose services you want to manage.

3. Expand the Services And Applications node by clicking the plus sign (+) next to it, and then choose Services.

Figure 3-3 shows the Services view in the Computer Manage console. The key fields of this window are used as follows:

• Name The name of the service.

• Description A short description of the service and its purpose.

• Status The status of the service as started, paused, or stopped. (Stopped is indicated by a blank entry.)

• Startup The startup setting for the service.

  Note: Automatic services are started at bootup. Manual services are started by users or other services. Disabled services are turned off and can't be started.

• Account Run Under The account the service logs on as. The default in most cases is the local system account.

Figure 3-3: Use the Services node of the Computer Management window to manage Exchange Server services.

Using Core Exchange Server Services

Table 3-1 provides a summary of the services essential to normal Exchange operations. Note that the services that are available on a particular Exchange server depend on its configuration. Still, there is a core set of services that you'll find on most Exchange servers.

Table 3-1 Core Exchange Server Services

Starting, Stopping, and Pausing Exchange Server Services

As an administrator, you'll often have to start, stop, or pause Exchange services. You manage Exchange services through the Computer Management console or through System Manager.

To start, stop, or pause services in the Computer Management console, follow these steps.

1. Right-click the Computer Management entry in the console tree, and on the shortcut menu, select Connect To Another Computer. You can now choose the Exchange server whose services you want to manage.

2. Expand the Services And Applications node by clicking the plus sign (+) next to it, and then choose Services.

3. Right-click the service you want to manipulate, and then select Start, Stop, or Pause as appropriate. You can also choose Restart to have Windows stop and then start the service after a brief pause. Also, if you pause a service, you can use the Resume option to resume normal operation.

Tip When services that are set to start automatically fail, the status is listed as blank and you'll usually receive notification in a pop-up window. Service failures can also be logged to the system's event logs. In Windows 2000, you can configure actions to handle service failure automatically. For example, you could have Windows 2000 attempt to restart the service for you. See the section of this chapter entitled "Configuring Service Recovery" for details.

Several of the Exchange services are used to manage the Exchange virtual servers. These services are:

• Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 for the IMAP4 virtual server

• Microsoft Exchange POP3 for the POP3 virtual server

• NNTP for the NNTP virtual server

• SMTP for the SMTP virtual server

If you start, stop, or pause these services in the Computer Management console, you're managing the related virtual server as well. You can also use System Manager to perform these tasks. To do that, complete the following steps.

1. In System Manager, access the Servers node within the administrative or routing group you want to manage. Typically, you would expand Administrative Groups, First Administrative Group, and then the Servers node.

2. In the console tree, select the Exchange server you want to manage, and then double-click Protocols. You should now see a list of protocols installed on the server.

3. The Protocol folder stores related virtual servers. For example, the IMAP4 folder stores the Default IMAP4 virtual server and any other IMAP4 virtual servers you've created.

4. Right-click the virtual server you want to start, stop, or pause, and then on the shortcut menu, select Start, Stop, or Pause as appropriate.

Configuring Service Startup

Essential Exchange services are configured to start automatically and normally shouldn't be configured with another startup option. That said, if you're troubleshooting a problem, you may want a service to start manually. You may also want to disable a service so that its related virtual servers don't start. For example, if you move the POP3 virtual servers to a new server for load balancing, you may want to disable the Microsoft Exchange POP3 service on the original Exchange server. In this way, the POP3 service isn't used, but it could be turned on if necessary (without having to reinstall POP3 support).

You configure service startup by completing the following steps.

1. In the Computer Management console, connect to the Exchange server whose services you want to manage.

2. Expand the Services And Applications node by clicking the plus sign (+) next to it, and then choose Services.

3. Right-click the service you want to configure, and then choose Properties.

4. In the General tab, use the Startup Type selection list to choose a startup option, as shown in Figure 3-4. Select Automatic to start services at bootup. Select Manual to allow services to be started manually. Select Disabled to turn off services.

5. Click OK.

Figure 3-4: For troubleshooting, you may want to change the service startup option in the Properties dialog box.

Configuring Service Recovery

You can configure Windows services to take specific actions when a service fails. For example, you could attempt to restart the service or reboot the server. To configure recovery options for a service, follow these steps.

1. In the Computer Management console, connect to the computer whose services you want to manage.

2. Expand the Services And Applications node by clicking the plus sign (+) next to it, and then choose Services.

3. Right-click the service you want to configure, and then choose Properties.

   Select the Recovery tab, as shown in Figure 3-5. You can now configure recovery options for the first, second, and subsequent recovery attempts. The available options are:

   • Take No Action

   • Restart The Service

   • Run A File

   • Reboot The Computer

4. Configure other options based on your previously selected recovery options. If you elected to restart the service, you'll need to specify the restart delay. After stopping the service, Windows 2000 waits for the specified delay period before trying to start the service. In most cases a delay of 1–2 minutes should be sufficient.

5. Click OK.

Figure 3-5: By using the Recovery tab in the Properties dialog box, you can configure services to automatically recover in case of failure.

When you configure recovery options for critical services, you may want to try to restart the service on the first and second attempts and then reboot the server on the third attempt.