How This Book Is Organized

This book is made up of 21 chapters and an appendix, divided into seven broad topic areas. As you proceed through the book, you'll move from basic concepts to several increasingly complex levels of hands-on implementation.

This book won't work well for practitioners of the timeworn ritual of chapter hopping. We have taken great pains to write an integrated book on Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007. Unless you already have considerable experience with these products, to get the maximum value out of this book, you need to track through the chapters in order. In later chapters, you will frequently find us referring to previous chapters to get more details on a specific topic.

If you are an Exchange 2000/2003 administrator and you are ready to get started with your migration, we recommend that you pay close attention to Part 2, "Installing, Configuring, Migrating, and Scaling" (Chapters 4, 5, and 6). While you should not read just these three chapters and then start your migration, they will definitely send you on your way.

However, if you're in a hurry to get your hands dirty, start with Part 3, "Basic Exchange Server 2007 Management. Chapter 7, "Administering Exchange 2007," will introduce you to the new Exchange Management Console and the new Exchange Management Shell, and Chapter 10, "Managing Recipients," will get you rolling on managing mail-enabled recipients. As long as you're not planning to put your quickie server into production immediately, there should be no harm done. Before going into production, though, we strongly suggest that you explore other parts of this book. Here's a guide to what's in each chapter.

Part 1: Understanding and Planning

This part of the book focuses on concepts and features of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007 client/server electronic messaging system. It is designed to provide you with the underlying knowledge that you'll need when you tackle Windows and Exchange Server 2007 installation, administration, and management later in this book.

Chapter 1, "Introducing Exchange Server 2007," presents some basic information about Exchange Server 2007 products, helping you optimize the value of these products in your organization. This chapter will introduce you to new features as well as features that are being de-emphasized in Exchange Server 2007.

Chapter 2, "Exchange Server 2007 Architecture," looks in some detail at the decision to move to the 64-bit architecture as well as system requirements for running Exchange Server 2007. This chapter also discusses the Exchange Server 2007 dependencies on Windows 2003 and Active Directory.

Chapter 3, "Designing a New Exchange 2007 System," covers Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2007 system planning and design, facilitating your initial use of these complex products in your organization.

Part 2: Installation, Configuring, Migrating, and Scaling

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 runs on top of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003. This part covers the installation of Exchange Server 2007. In previous versions, we also covered installation of Windows, but we recommend that you refer to a dedicated Window reference such as Mastering Windows Server 2003 by Mark Minasi (Sybex, 2003).

Chapter 4, "Installing Exchange Server 2007," provides the details on Exchange Server 2007 installation, server roles, disk configuration, and basic security.

Chapter 5, "Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007," covers migrating from Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 to Exchange Server 2007, including prerequisites and factors to consider before starting a migration. Also included in this chapter are recommendations for migration phases, co-existence, and reasons you would need to keep older Exchange servers in production.

Chapter 6, "Scaling Upward and Outward," helps you to determine when to add an additional server and whether you should add more mailbox databases. Local continuous replication is also covered in this chapter.

Part 3: Basic Exchange Server 2007 Management

Attention shifts in this section to day-to-day Exchange Server operational tasks. Most of these tasks are carried out within the Exchange Management Console, but some can be performed only through the Exchange Management Shell.

Chapter 7, "Administering Exchange 2007," covers many of the basic administrative changes to Exchange Server 2007, including delegating permissions for users, using the Exchange Management Console, and an introduction to using the Exchange Management Shell.

Chapter 8, "Exchange Organization, Server, and Recipient Management," focuses on how to find the necessary configuration options for components that affect the entire organization, individual servers, and mail-enabled servers and lists many of the Exchange Management Shell cmdlets. Much of this chapter is covered in more detail in other chapters, but this chapter will help both new Exchange administrators as well as those upgrading from previous versions when you need to find a particular option.

Chapter 9, "Imposing Limits," covers the different types of limits (mailbox sizes, message sizes, folder sizes, connector limits) that an administrator can apply in Exchange 2007 and how to apply them.

Chapter 10, "Managing Recipients," concentrates on the Recipient Configuration work center in the Exchange Management Console and on using it to administer and manage mail-enabled recipients. This includes mailbox-enabled users, resource mailbox management, mail-enabled groups, and mail-enabled contacts.

Chapter 11, "Managing Address Lists," covers the use of the default global address list, custom address lists, offline address books, and the distribution of offline address books.

Chapter 12, "Managing Folder Content," introduces the new messaging records management features of Exchange 2007, including creating managed custom folders, defining folder content settings, and configuring managed folder mailbox policies.

Chapter 13, "Managing Messages in Transit," introduces the new transport rule feature and how to implement it. This chapter also discusses message journaling.

Chapter 14, "Public Folder Administration," introduces management of public folders and the Exchange 2007 Exchange Management Shell cmdlets necessary to manage public folder properties. Additionally, this chapter covers using the Exchange 2003 System Manager console if you want to continue to have a graphical user interface for managing public folder properties because the Exchange 2007 release-to-manufacturing version does not include one.

Part 4: Exchange Server Reliability and Availability

If you ask your users what they expect most from you as the Exchange server administrator, they will probably tell you uninterrupted messaging service. Well, and maybe that you will answer your cell phone 24/7. In this section, we discuss techniques for providing better availability for Exchange Server 2007 and for ensuring that you can recover in the event of a server failure or a disaster.

Chapter 15, "Reliability and Availability 101," introduces many of the concepts of providing better availability for Exchange Server 2007, and it includes a lot of basic tips for ensuring that your server platform is reliable and stable. There are also discussions of using Microsoft's Network Load Balancing utility and an introduction to clustering.

Chapter 16, "Backup and Disaster Recovery," includes discussions on developing a backup plan for your Exchange Server 2007 severs as well as backup procedures using the Windows Backup utility. The chapter also covers restoring mailbox databases to recovery storage groups.

Part 5: Outlook

Exchange Server is a pretty nifty little gadget. But without clients, it's nothing more than fancy technology. Although this is a book on Exchange Server, the Outlook client merits some discussion. This section is devoted to that discussion.

Chapter 17, "Supporting Outlook 2007," covers the Outlook 2007 client from an administrative perspective and includes features that are useful for the Exchange Server administrator to be aware of. This chapter includes coverage of the new Autodiscover feature as well as how to set up Exchange Server to support Autodiscover.

Part 6: Connectivity

The Connectivity section of the book covers message delivery and Exchange client connectivity.

Chapter 18, "Delivering E-mail," concentrates on the Hub Transport and Edge Transport roles within an organization. This includes configuring a Hub Transport server to send and receive e-mail directly to and from the Internet and using the Edge Transport server role to provide anti-spam functions.

Chapter 19, "Exchange Anywhere," addresses connectivity to the Exchange server from variety of clients that might be used remotely, including using Outlook Web Access, Exchange ActiveSync, and Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP). This section also covers how to enable and configure these the POP3 or IMAP4 protocols on a Exchange Server 2007 Client Access server.

Part 7: Security and Tracking Activities

The final section of this book revolves around security, auditing, and tracking including improving security of each of the server roles, using the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, enabling protocol logging, tracking messages, and using the Exchange Queue Viewer application.

Chapter 20, "Securing Exchange Server," discusses the use of firewalls, hardening Exchange server using the Security Configuration Wizard, and providing multiple layers of security for Exchange servers. This chapter also includes a discussion on publishing Outlook Web Access and other web applications using a reverse proxy server such as ISA Server.

Chapter 21, "Logging, Auditing, and Monitoring," wraps up our discussion of Exchange Server 2007. We feel particularly strongly that you should enable a fair degree of auditing and logging features in Exchange Server 2007 since these are frequently things you don't realize you need until after the fact. In this chapter, we also cover the use of the Queue Viewer and the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer.

Appendix: Cool Third-Party Applications for Exchange Server and Outlook Clients

This book's appendix takes you on a thrill ride through some of the many products that exist today to enhance and extend the reach of Exchange Server. Coverage includes applications and services that do the following:

• Make Exchange Server installation and administration easier.

• Bring faxing and document management capabilities to Exchange servers.

• Improve upon the backup software built into Windows/Exchange Server 2007.

• Provide near-line storage message archiving.

• Check for potential and actual internal and external security breaches.

• Guard Exchange servers and networks against virus attacks and spam messages.

• Provide messaging systems linking e-mail, telephone services, voice, and text.

• Improve workflow by using e-mail to connect users working on a common task.