Recipe2.17.Viewing Administrative Groups in Exchange System Manager

Recipe 2.17. Viewing Administrative Groups in Exchange System Manager

Problem

You want to see AGs in Exchange System Manager so that you can inspect and modify them.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Launch the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).

2. In the left pane, right-click the Exchange organization node and select the Properties command.

3. Switch to the General tab.

4. Check the Display administrative groups checkbox. If you've already switched to native Exchange mode, this will already be on.

5. Optionally, check the Display routing groups checkbox if you want to see routing groups displayed within the AGs that contain them.

6. Click OK.

7. If Exchange System Manager warns you that you'll have to relaunch ESM to see the changes, click OK, then quit and restart ESM.

8. Verify that there's a node labeled Administrative Groups in the lefthand ESM pane. Expand it to see what administrative groups currently exist.

Discussion

What AGs you have will depend on how you installed Exchange. In a clean Exchange 2000 or Exchange Server 2003 installation, you'll only have one: First Administrative Group. If you used the instructions in Recipe 2.16, this first group may have a different name. If you're installing Exchange 2000 or 2003 into an existing Exchange 5.5 organization, then you'll see each Exchange 5.5 site as a separate AG: that's because a 5.5 site is the boundary for both message routing and administrative control. However, you won't see any of these AGs unless you enable their display in ESM.

See Also

MS KB 242561 (XADM: How to Make Administrative Groups/Routing Groups Containers Visible in Exchange System Manager), and Recipe 2.18 for creating additional AGs