Exchange Server Cookbook

Chapter 4. Exchange Server and Organization Management

Introduction

Exchange servers don't require a huge amount of ongoing babysitting, but it is important to know how to perform some server-level maintenance tasks. Actually, most Exchange maintenance tasks involve databases or storage groups, as that's where the high-value data are stored. The recipes in this chapter break down into two basic areas: monitoring and controlling your Exchange servers at the server level, and setting properties on the Exchange organization object. These properties affect all of the servers in your organization. For the most part, you'll use the Exchange System Manager (ESM) tool to make these changes.

ESM is an MMC-based application that layers a large number of Exchange-specific customizations on top of the basic MMC interface paradigm: a tree view on the left that shows one or more nodes (some with child nodes, some without), plus a large pane on the right that displays subordinate nodes or settings for whatever's selected in the left pane. This doesn't sound like too much to master; the real trick with ESM is learning which settings are in which property pages, because there certainly are a lot of those around. It's also important to understand the versions of ESM and what they can do:

• The Exchange 2000 ESM is what we think of as the "classic" version. It can be used to manage Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000 servers, and to view (but not change) the properties of Exchange Server 2003 machines. However, ...