Chapter 12 -- Management Tools for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server

Chapter 12

About This Chapter

The management of Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server relies on a set of Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins. By combining snap-ins, you can create your own customized management tools. Such tools can greatly improve the efficiency of administering the entire Microsoft Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 environment. To give an example, you may blend the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in with the Public Folder Management snap-in and assign the new tool to a group of administrators dedicated to maintaining mailboxes and public folder resources.

You may go as far as developing your own snap-ins to extend existing Exchange 2000 management components. The MMC Snap-In Designer for Visual Basic 6.0, for example, can help you get started quickly, provided that you are a Visual Basic programmer. The MMC Snap-In Designer was first introduced with the January 2000 edition of the Platform Software Development Kit (SDK).

This chapter introduces various Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 snap-ins that are important for managing Exchange 2000 resources. It provides a feature overview. General MMC concepts were discussed in Chapter 2, "Integration with Microsoft Windows 2000."

Before You Begin

To complete this chapter:

• Prepare your test environment according to the descriptions given in the "Getting Started" section of "About This Book."
• Be familiar with the concepts of the MMC and the utilization of MMC snap-ins.