Recipe4.4.Determining Whether a Server Is a Front-End Server

Recipe 4.4. Determining Whether a Server Is a Front-End Server

Problem

You need to determine whether an Exchange server is acting as a front-end server.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

Launch the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).
In the left pane, expand the appropriate Administrative Groups container and expand the Servers container.
Right-click an Exchange server object and select Properties.
Select the General tab; if the This is a front-end server checkbox is selected, the server is acting as a front-end server; if it is unchecked, it's not. In that case, the server may be a back-end, public folder, or SMTP server.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each Exchange server you're interested in.

Using a command-line interface

The following command will query Active Directory for servers that have the ServerRole attribute defined (see the Discussion section):

 > dsquery * "CN=Administrative Groups, CN=<orgName>, CN=Microsoft  Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,<ForestDN>"     -filter (&(objectcategory=msExchExchangeServer)(serverRole=1)) -attr cn msExchServerRole

For example, this command will find all front-end servers in the sixih.com AD domain:

 > dsquery * "CN=Administrative Groups, CN=sixih, CN=Microsoft  Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=sixih,DC=com"     -filter (&(objectcategory=msExchExchangeServer)(serverRole=1))  -attr cn msExchServerRole

Using VBScript

' This code uses ADO to query the MSExchServerRole attribute for all servers ' in the domain.  ' --------------SCRIPT CONFIGURATION------------------ strBase = "<LDAP://cn=administrative groups,cn=robichaux and  associates,cn=microsoft exchange,cn=services,cn=configuration, dc=robichaux,dc=net>;" ' dc=<domain> ,dc=<tld>;" strFilter = "(objectcategory=MSExchExchangeServer);" strAttrs = "ServerRole,cn;" strScope = "subtree" '---------------END CONFIGURATION--------------------- Set objConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") objConn.Open "Provider=ADsDSOObject;" Set objRS = objConn.Execute(strBase & strFilter & strAttrs & strScope) objRS.MoveFirst While Not objRS.EOF     strName = objRS.Fields("cn").value    'Get the value of the MSExchServerRole     If objRS.Fields("ServerRole").value = 1 Then                     strRole = "Front-End Server"     Elseif IsNull(objRS.Fields("ServerRole").value) Then           strRole = "Back-End Server"     Elseif objRS.Fields("ServerRole").value = 0 Then           strRole = "Back-End Server"     end if         wscript.echo strName & " is a " & strRole    objRS.MoveNext  Wend

Discussion

In large Exchange deployments, you may lose track of what role an Exchange server is serving. The msExchServerRole attribute on each server object enables you to determine that server's role. A msExchServerRole value of 1 indicates a front-end server; a value of 0 indicates that the server isn't a front-end server. If you want to determine whether a non-front-end server is actually a back-end mailbox server, you can check to see if it has any mailbox databases associated with it.

Using a graphical user interface

There's no way to grab this information from numerous servers within your organization at onceyou must point and click all the way. This is okay if you have three servers to check, but if you have twelve or twenty, you are better off using the CLI or VBScript solutions.

Using a command-line interface

Dsquery is a command-line tool included in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The tool is not native to Windows 2000 Server, but you can copy dsquery.exe onto a Windows 2000 Server from another computer and it will work correctly for most queries (including the ones shown here).