Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out

Distribution groups

Every Exchange organization supports distribution groups and the largest deployments usually include tens of thousands of groups. It is certainly useful to be able to address many different recipients through one common address. However, distribution groups are seldom managed as well as mailboxes and tend to linger in the directory long after they have ceased to be used. I worked at Hewlett-Packard until 2010 and, even then, I could find groups called the “Windows 2000 Launch Team” and “Windows NT Forum” in the GAL, both of which were artefacts of work done in the past.

Windows supports four different types of groups. Exchange really has use for only two of these: universal groups and dynamic or query-based groups. Universal ...