Management Consoles

As you install Exchange 2007 on your servers, you may or may not wish to install the sixth role - the management tools role. You can instead place the management tools role on a separate server or workstation and use it as a management console.

The management tools role is the only role that can be installed for production use with the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007, thus allowing you to install it on existing management consoles. In fact, Microsoft makes the 32-bit version of these tools available as a separate download from their website.

By using this version you can install the Exchange 2007 management tools on the same machines your existing legacy Exchange management tools are on. If you do choose to use the 32-bit versions of the management tools, you will need to first install the 32-bit version of the Exchange 2007 prerequisites.

Warning 

You cannot install the legacy Exchange System Manager on an Exchange 2007 server; legacy versions of Exchange are not supported on 64-bit Windows, and the IIS SMTP component required by the legacy System Manager would conflict with the Exchange 2007 SMTP stack.

So, why would you want to have the legacy System Manager on your Exchange 2007 management console?

• You still have existing legacy Exchange servers during the duration of your transition.

• You have legacy Exchange servers with features that are not supported in Exchange 2007. As long as you use these features, you will need to keep the legacy System Manager.

• You have public folders in your organization. While you can manage them using the Exchange Management Shell, it is frankly easier to do it using the System Manager. If you have a large public folder infrastructure, we would say that keeping the System Manager is mandatory - unless, of course, you don't value your sanity.

Warning 

In legacy versions of Exchange, the creation of user accounts and provisioning of Exchange features all took place with extensions to the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in. In Exchange 2007, you can only use the management tools to provision existing users or create new mail-enabled objects. You may be tempted to continue using Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in to provision mailboxes and other recipients on your Exchange 2007 servers. However, these recipients are in "mixed mode" and cannot use most of the new Exchange 2007 features until you use the Exchange 2007 management tools to update them. When you move mailboxes to an Exchange 2007 Mailbox server using the Exchange 2007 Move Mailbox Wizard or Move-Mailbox cmdlet, the user object is automatically upgraded.