4.4. Determining Whether a Server Is a Front-End Server
Problem
You need to determine whether an Exchange server is acting as a front-end server.
Solution
Using a graphical user interface
Launch the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).
In the left pane, expand the appropriate Administrative Groups container and expand the Servers container.
Right-click an Exchange server object and select Properties.
Select the General tab; if the This is a front-end server checkbox is selected, the server is acting as a front-end server; if it is unchecked, it's not. In that case, the server may be a back-end, public folder, or SMTP server.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each Exchange server you're interested in.
Using a command-line interface
The following command will query Active Directory for servers that have the ServerRole attribute defined (see the Discussion section):
> dsquery * "CN=Administrative Groups, CN=<orgName>, CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,<ForestDN>" -filter (&(objectcategory=msExchExchangeServer)(serverRole=1)) -attr cn msExchServerRole
For example, this command will find all front-end servers in
the sixih.com AD domain:
> dsquery * "CN=Administrative Groups, CN=sixih, CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=sixih,DC=com" -filter (&(objectcategory=msExchExchangeServer)(serverRole=1)) -attr cn msExchServerRole
Using VBScript
' This code uses ADO to query the MSExchServerRole attribute for all servers ' in the domain. ' --------------SCRIPT CONFIGURATION------------------ ...