Examining the Exchange Hierarchy

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The top of the hierarchy in the scope pane of the Exchange System snap-in is the snap-in root node that represents the Exchange organization. It has a small globe icon with an envelope in front of it, as shown in Figure 8-4. In this example, the snap-in root node is named OakTree (Exchange). All of the Exchange containers are held within this node. There are eight primary containers directly within the snap-in root node. The sections that follow describe each of these containers.

click to view at full size.

Figure 8-4. The Exchange hierarchy.

NOTE
What you see in the main Exchange System scope pane depends upon whether you have configured multiple administrative groups and whether you have configured the Exchange System snap-in to display administrative groups. If you have only one administrative group and have not changed the default settings, you will see the eight containers discussed here. If you have multiple administrative groups and you have configured the Exchange System snap-in to display those groups, you will not see the Servers, Policies, Connectors, Conferencing, and Folders containers in the main display. Instead, you will see a container named Administrative Groups that in turn holds a container for each administrative group defined in your organization. Each of those administrative group containers will hold the five missing containers, since each of those items can be configured at the level of the administrative group. You will learn a lot more about working with administrative groups in Chapter 12.

Global Settings Container

The Global Settings container holds objects governing settings that apply to your entire organization. Inside this container, you will find two objects. The first, Internet Message Formats, defines the formatting for SMTP messages sent over the Internet. Chapter 16 discusses the use of this object in detail.

The second object in the Global Settings container, Message Delivery, is used to configure message defaults for your organization. You can open the property sheet for this object by selecting the object and choosing Properties from the Action menu. The Defaults tab, shown in Figure 8-5, lets you set message limit defaults for your organization. You can set the maximum size, in kilobytes, for both incoming and outgoing messages and the maximum number of recipients that can exist on a server.

Figure 8-5. Setting messaging defaults for your organization.

The Filtering tab, shown in Figure 8-6, lets you create filters for handling messages from particular SMTP addresses. For each SMTP address that you enter here, you can specify whether messages from that address should be deleted or dropped into a custom folder. This is a great way to block unwanted messages (spam) from reaching your recipients or to automatically group all messages from a recipient into a single location.

Figure 8-6. Setting messaging filters.

Recipients Container

The Recipients container is used to manage server settings that apply to recipients in your organization. You can define recipient policies, manage address lists, and even modify address templates. All of these actions are covered in Chapter 9.

Servers Container

The configuration objects held within the Servers container will depend upon how you have set up your organization. If your organization has only one administrative group, your Servers container holds one container for each of the servers in your organization. If your organization has more than one administrative group, you will find the containers for the individual servers inside those administrative group containers.

Regardless of how your organization is configured, the server containers are where you will perform a good bit of your Exchange administration. Within each server container, you will find configuration objects for managing the protocols, connectors, and storage groups configured on the server. The next several chapters of this book cover the various aspects of server management in detail and from a few different perspectives. In particular, you will learn to manage server components in Chapters 11, 12, and 13.

Policies Container

The Policies container holds objects that define various system policies that may be implemented for your organization. If you have only one administrative group, the Policies container appears as a primary container under the organization. If you have multiple administrative groups, a Policies container will appear for each group inside the group container.

Policies are a new feature in Exchange 2000 Server, designed to enable flexible administration of large numbers of Exchange objects. A policy is a collection of configuration settings applied to one or more Exchange 2000 Server objects of the same type. An administrator can define a policy that controls the configuration settings across many servers, mailboxes, or public folders. Once a policy has been defined and implemented, you can change the configuration of all of the objects the policy covers by editing the policy and applying the changes.

A policy that controls configuration settings can span multiple servers. Once this type of policy is defined and implemented, you can change the configuration of multiple servers by editing the policy and reapplying it. You can use policies in the following ways:

  • Create a new object and add it to an existing policy.
  • Add an existing object to an existing policy.
  • Create a new policy and add it to an existing object.

NOTE
There are actually two types of policies: system and recipient. System policies are created and applied to a server, a mailbox store, or a public store. These are the policies that appear in the Policies container in MMC. Recipient policies are applied to mail-enabled Exchange objects (any object with at least one e-mail address) to generate e-mail addresses. These policies appear in MMC as the Recipient Policies container inside the Recipients container. Chapter 9 discusses recipient policies.

Connectors Container

The Connectors container holds configuration items for each of the connectors available within your organization. If you have only one administrative group, the Connectors container appears as a primary container under the organization. If you have multiple administrative groups, a Connectors container will appear for each group inside the group container.

The objects within the Connectors container represent both connectors between routing groups in your organization and connectors to foreign messaging systems. Chapter 13 covers connectors between routing groups, and Chapter 15 describes connectors to foreign messaging systems.

Tools Container

The Tools container holds objects that help you manage your Exchange organization. You'll find three containers within the Tools container. The Site Replication Service container lets you configure replication with existing Exchange 5.5 sites, using the Active Directory Connector. This topic is covered in Chapter 14.

The Message Tracking Center object is actually a shortcut for opening the Message Tracking Center, which lets you track specific messages in your organization. The Monitors container holds objects that let you monitor the status of servers and connections in your organization. Both of these objects are covered in Chapter 23.

Folders Container

The last container in the hierarchy is Folders. The Folders container holds the public folders hierarchy and the folders' properties, but not their contents. It also contains the system folders, a list of folders that Exchange users do not see. The system folders hold the Offline Address Book and other system configuration objects. If you have only one administrative group, the Folders container appears as a primary container under the organization. If you have multiple administrative groups, a Folders container will appear for each group inside the group container. You will learn more about configuring folders in Chapter 10.



Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Adminstrator's Companion
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Adminstrator's Companion
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 1999
Pages: 193

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