Section 1.2. Where to Get Tools

1.2. Where to Get Tools

Over time, Microsoft has gotten more generous with its tools. With Exchange 5.5, there were only a few tools shipped on the product CD; most of the good stuff was available only to customers who'd purchased Premier-level support contracts, and many of those tools were officially unsupported. We made a conscious decision to steer away from those tools in this book; instead, we'll stick with tools that are available from, and supported by, Microsoft as part of its Exchange and Windows platforms (with occasional exceptions for extraordinarily useful tools that aren't officially supported). These tools come from a variety of places:

• Microsoft finally has an Exchange-specific tools page at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/tools/2003.asp. This is the best place to start, as it will always contain the latest supported build of released tools; for example, the exmerge tool is included on the product CD, but there's a newer version available from this page. Don't let the name fool you; this page contains tools that work with both Exchange 2000 and Exchange Server 2003. Microsoft periodically releases updates to these tools in packages called web releases (WRs), which are more or less like service packs for the add-on toolset. There's also an option to download All Tools, which we highly recommend, as having the tools available locally may mean you won't have to go searching for tools during a crisis.

• A number of tools are available in the support\utils directory of the Exchange CD itself. If you have the Exchange Server 2003 CD, use it because many of the tools it contains are newer than the versions shipped with Exchange 2000.

• The diagnostic tools used for Active Directory troubleshooting are found on the Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 CDs, in the support\tools directory. Besides these diagnostic tools, the support tools archive includes a wealth of other useful tools.

• The Windows resource kits (see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/) include both information and tools. For this book, the most useful tools are probably the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools and the Windows 2000 Resource Kit Tools, both of which are freely available from this page.