Changes in the Exchange Management Console
In this article and video we will be examining some of the introduced changes to the Exchange Management console utility for Exchange Server 2010. In Exchange 2007 the EMC was introduced as the only graphical administrative utility used to manage all facets of an Exchange organization. Fundamental changes were introduced such as the creation, configuration, and management of Exchange recipients which had formerly been done using Active Directory Users and Computers. Other changes included the ability to control almost all of the Outlook Web Access virtual directory and other client protocol settings which had formerly been done using IIS Manager. The Exchange team had attempted to shift all administration duties to the Exchange tools in an effort to reduce the requirements for Exchange administrators to bounce back and forth between administrative tools. This was seen as both good and bad depending on the specific administrative scenario.
Administrators who worked in smaller organizations had become accustomed to creating user accounts in ADUC and mailboxes in a simultaneous step and seem generally annoyed at not having that option any longer. Enterprise networks, on the other hand, can benefit from the separation of both administrative permissions as well as administrative tools in situations where the Exchange and Active Directory teams were separate. Another cause for annoyance was that elements which were available in ADUC such as user account templates and the modification of multiple objects were not available in the graphical EMC but instead administrators were forced to use the Exchange Management Shell which provided additional cmdlets built on top of Powershell 1.0. The primary complaint that I heard as an Exchange trainer was in relation to this. Not everything could be performed in the GUI, even those day to day tasks such as creating users using a template or modifying multiple objects. While administrators can benefit from the automation and scheduling provided in Powershell, some Exchange administrators were reluctant to learn a new CLI in order to perform these tasks.
With Microsoft Exchange 2010, the second version of the Exchange Management Console was released and many of these problems were addressed. We will cover some of the most important changes to the GUI in this article. Keep in mind that certain things will still require the use of the command line unless third-party tools, such as Quest PowerGUI (freeware) are utilized. But these items are minimized to configurations that have to be performed once for the whole organization or those that are fairly abnormal in most environments. Everything still relies on Powershell in Exchange 2010, and all functions that are performed in the graphical interface will ultimately run Powershell cmdlets in the background. One of the most exciting changes is the additional way in which these cmdlets are exposed to the administrator, further assisting us in learning the nuances of the Powershell cmdlet syntax. In Exchange 2007 the administrator was presented with the code that the wizard would use on the last page of the wizard and given the ability to copy that information for reuse. That was helpful and all but only provided guidance when you were creating new objects. Much of what EMS was required for was to make bulk modifications to objects that were already present. In Exchange 2010, when you access the properties of an object, or multiple objects, and edit a single property a clickable box appears in the property sheet which allows administrators to expose the cmdlet that will be run when they select Apply or OK buttons. This is incredibly invaluable to learning the names of cmdlets and parameters that are used for specific tasks. Another enhancement that makes this functionality even better is the ability to select and work with multiple objects of the same type in the graphical interface. Exchange 2007 was limited to moving, disabling, and removing objects as a group which was disheartening since ADUC was capable of modifying more attributes then that. it was as if we had taken a step backward. Exchange 2010 takes a huge step forward allowing you to select multiple objects of the same type throughout the organization and modify ANY property on all those objects. Using the GUI! I can hear the cheers of you who dislike the CLI!
Another unfortunate characteristic of Exchange 2007 was in relation to resource mailboxes, both room and equipment mailboxes, that were created for the purpose of scheduling meetings in a more feature right environment that provided advanced notifications and automation. The functionality worked great but almost every property pertaining to automation had to be configured via EMS or by logging into the resource mailbox individually in OWA to set the options. Personally this was always a huge complaint from administrators that I have spoken with or trained on Exchange 2007. Exchange 2010 exposes all the resource properties to the GUI so that resource booking can be setup in its entirety without requiring the EMS. Room and equipment mailboxes can also take advantage of the aforementioned capability of selecting multiple objects and modifying attributes for all of them in a single step.
Other enhancements to the Exchange Management Console include a consolidated Organizational view which allows administrators to quickly see statistics on the number of servers, clients, mailboxes, etc. within the organization and the license state of servers. There are capabilities for creating and monitoring failover clustering environments that use the new Database Availability Group (DAG) without ever using the failover cluster tools, creating and managing them entirely from the EMC. The ability to manage multiple forests, federated sharing relationships, and even online and local parts to the Exchange organization for companies that use Microsoft's Online Business Productivity services. These are really just to name a few, because as with every version of Exchange there are new objects and features within the Exchange environment that are manageable in the GUI but don't necessarily represent an "enhancement" to the interface because that object or functionality was not present the preceding release. All in all, Microsoft has made every attempt to give administrators more flexibility and more choices when it comes to Exchange administration by taking extra time and adding much of the functionality that had been removed back into the graphical EMC.
About K Alliance:
K Alliance is the premier solutions provider of e-learning courseware. Microsoft Exchange Server training reveals and demonstrates the many benefits your staff, development team and enterprise will discover through the use of a unified communications strategy, designed to streamline and extend the way you conduct business. Mailbox resiliency, help desk message tracking, distribution group manage of information, a higher availability and recovery of data, and automatic failure recovery are some of the many topics discussed in our Microsoft Exchange 2010 training videos. With the high demand of credible, knowledgeable individuals, many professionals increase their career opportunities and their technical capabilities with an MCITP Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010 certification. Our training structure provides the necessary tutelage in the responsibilities of creating, deploying, optimizing and continuous management of an entire Exchange Server 2010 environment. MCTS Exchange Server 2010 Configuration CBT training allows the busy, hustling professional the freedom of self-study as their schedule permits.
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