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Contents: |
Microsoft® Exchange 2003 E-mail Server
Product Review |
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by: Howard Forder MCT, MCSE
© Copyright 2004 Forder Technical Services Inc. |
Introducing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
By now, your interest has brought you this far so you have probably heard about Exchange Server, Microsoft's e-mail server that has been gaining acceptance in the workplace in leaps and bounds. With Exchange Server as my specialty area, I have been teaching Microsoft Curriculum (MOC) courses for Exchange since version 4.0, the first version available to the public. I have seen this product grow and mature to a full-fledged Enterprise e-mail server product and gain acceptance with mass migration from every e-mail platform on the market.
The appeal of the Exchange Server product has been its intuitive interface, easy implementation, comprehensive help section and related courses for skills acquisition. It can interface with any e-mail client you can throw at it and it can route messages to any Internet or other Exchange domain making it easy to adapt to any environment easily.
Exchange 2000 was the big radical change from the conventional X.400 core routing protocol found in previous versions of Exchange. Exchange 2003 builds upon the familiar interface of Exchange 2000 with a host of new features and even some features of Exchange 2000 removed, as I will explain later on. Exchange 2003 uses the SMTP protocol at its heart and can still use X.400 if you so desire (need to connect to older Exchange or foreign X.400 systems). With SMTP as its native routing protocol at the heart of the product, it easily connects to other e-mail servers and of course the Internet, where the SMTP protocol became the de facto standard in modern e-mail systems. This, of course is the same as Exchange 2000 as is the standard features we came to love such as unlimited database sizes and multiple database on one server (Enterprise Edition) so let's see what's new in Exchange 2003.
New Features in Exchange 2003
One of the first things my students wow at is the new updated Outlook Web Access (OWA) interface provided in a web browser. For those who have never seen OWA, e-mail users can access their mail from anywhere using a web browser. Over the years, with each new Exchange version, came an enhanced mail access interface from a standard web browser. The new interface has many heads turning as it looks very closely like the full Outlook® e-mail product you typically find on the LAN desktop. The feature-laden interface and full functionality design make this a must have for those who try it. Add to that, Exchange 2003 Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) to extend this functionality to Exchange 2003 also integrates technology previously found in Mobile Information Server (MIS). This enables the Exchange administrator to incorporate portable devices such as web phones and PDAs to receive their e-mail and other messaging functions without buying the MIS product as in the past; it's all built in now and is called Outlook Mobile Access or OMA. Figure 1 (below) shows a typical corporate Exchange layout using secure mobile access:
Figure 1 - Typical corporate LAN architecture using Exchange and secure mobile access.
Also, on the mobile access topic, Exchange 2003 enables PDAs to sync directly with the server (ActiveSync® Server) instead of needing your Outlook® client running before synchronization. This enables you to synchronize your PDA from anywhere, anytime.
The administration side of Exchange 2003 has several new and improved management tools. A host of updated Wizards and experts make installing and configuring Exchange easier including checklists to help you with your migration or upgrade. Another area that improved is the capability for Exchange 2003 to send and receive e-mail from the Internet.
For increased reliability, Exchange Server 2003 makes use of the Shadow Copy Service, built into Windows Server(TM) 2003 making backups and restores of Exchange data easier. In addition, the new virus-scanning API (VSAPI) makes it easier to keep Exchange secure and allows programmers to make new and improved products for e-mail handling.
On the security front, Exchange 2003 leverages new security initiatives built in to Windows Server(TM) 2003 and adds some excellent new features of its own. A good example of this is the ability to get your web-based e-mail using a secure connection over the Internet and the new feature that allows an Outlook® 2003 user to keep using Outlook® 2003 while away from the office. This is made possible with a new feature called RPC over HTTP. Exchange administrators appreciate this feature as it solves the age-old problem of RPC clients extending their access beyond the corporate LAN.
One last beautiful feature that really isn't a product feature as much as it is an administrative convenience is the ability to install Exchange 2003 on your current Windows® 2000 network. You don't need Windows Server(TM) 2003 to incorporate this product in your workplace. Keep in mind that some features won't be available such as the Volume Shadow Copy service, but it sure helps to get the product in the door without upgrading the whole network infrastructure first.
Removed Features in Exchange 2003
You may be surprised to hear this, but after hearing about all the new features and improvements in the product, it may be shocking to hear that some features we have come to know and love in previous versions of Exchange have been removed. The reason for this is to streamline the products and group the similar functionality into specific products.
The general overview is simple: take the Instant Messaging, Chat and Conferencing functionality and put them into a separate product called the Microsoft® Office Live Communication Server (LCS) that you can install and configure independently of Exchange. As the release date approaches, there will be a new article on this web site about it.
Another feature we loved was the M: drive mapping introduced in Exchange 2000 that has been removed in this new version. You can still access the EXIFS through //backoffice/ mapping and you can put the M: drive back if you have applications that need it (using Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 821836 found on http://support.microsoft.com)
Installation of Exchange 2003
Those who have installed Exchange 2000 will find this task to be similar. The /Forestprep and /Domainprep are still the same procedure, although they add more items to the schema to support the new functionality. As in Exchange 2000, you needed to ensure you had the IIS running with the SMTP service active, the www service, the NNTP service all running before you started setup. With Exchange 2003 you have to also ensure you have the .NET framework installed and ASP.NET
If this is a Windows® 2000 Active Directory®, Exchange setup will add the .NET framework and ASP.NET for you. If you are installing Exchange onto a Windows Server(TM) 2003 environment, the .NET framework is already installed and Exchange will continue to configure ASP.NET for you. Keep in mind that during /Forestprep, Exchange 2003 will update the schema with new changes just as in the past, using .LDIF files. This will overwrite any manual schema changes you might have made to your Active Directory®. You will have to put those manual changes back afterwards. This could be an annoying inconvenience. I have observed that most Active Directory® forests have not manually altered their schemas so this shouldn't be an issue.
Related Products and New Add-Ons
Specifically from Microsoft, there are a few initiatives and add on products that will enhance your Exchange messaging platform. Here is an example of one such product that will "fill in the gap" of what's missing or hard to configure in current e-mail servers:
Exchange Edge Services
In a typical Exchange 2003 topology, e-mail servers that are configured to send and receive Internet-based e-mail are usually deployed at or near the network edge or at times are deployed inside the data center network behind routers and firewalls. These e-mail servers (known as gateway or bridgehead servers), accept incoming Internet e-mail messages and forward these messages to the appropriate mailbox server.
Exchange 2003 provides a set of blocking and filtering methods that are used to reduce unsolicited commercial e-mail, also known as junk e-mail. These methods are:
- DNS Block List Service provider support
- Global deny and accept lists
- Sender filtering
- Inbound recipient filtering
- Improved ability to restrict submissions to, and relaying on, SMTP virtual server
Each of these Exchange 2003 methods is used during the SMTP session when a connecting SMTP server attempts to send e-mail messages to a server running Exchange 2003.
Figure 2 - Perimeter services new to Exchange 2003.
Exchange Edge services expands the number of roles that Exchange can play by adding three major logical or physical e-mail-related functions for critical e-mail protection, security, and hygiene (see Figure 2 above). These include:
- SMTP gateway. Get a more secure and reliable SMTP implementation that requires a direct connection to the Internet and relays e-mail to and from the Internet. Exchange Edge services is the e-mail gatekeeper for the messaging customers.
- E-mail message hygiene. Exchange Edge services provides the basic infrastructure to support a variety of antispam or junk e-mail and antivirus technologies, from basic sender or recipient filtering, to an infrastructure for third-party independent software vendors (ISVs) to build and run antispam and antivirus services, to the new Intelligent Message Filter.
- Routing. Apply basic routing server rules (relay, address rewrite, masquerading, format conversion, and so on) and provide the basic rules engine to enable you to build custom rules.
Microsoft® Exchange Edge Services is expected to be released in 2005 so we need to get our e-mail servers up and running and fine-tuned.
Summary
This article has been intended as an introduction to Exchange 2003 without the sales brochure, written by a technical trainer who has worked with the product for a year now (both pre and post product release and in the classroom). I assure you that the popularity and enthusiasm for this product is very high and our classrooms prove it with standing room only on a continuous basis. You can find more information about Exchange 2003, curriculum courses and other related links below. Bookmark our site and come back for more articles on a regular basis.
Good luck with your rollout. Don't forget the use of VMWare or Microsoft® Virtual Server as a test platform for your Exchange configuration experimentation, just like in the official Microsoft course (MOC 2400B). This is an invaluable way to test many Exchange servers on one physical machine to help you study, configure and prepare.
-Howard Forder
Links
- www.vmware.com (use referral code XXXXXXXXXX for a discount)
- www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc (Virtual PC home page)
- www.cdilearn.com for curriculum courses (Exchange #2400) across Canada
- www.microsoft.com/exchange for all Exchange-related resources (valuable)
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Howard Forder MCT, MCSE is a technical writer, consultant and trainer (primarily at CDI Education) based in Toronto, Canada although you may find him in any North American city delivering a seminar or two. You can also find him teaching aviation enthusiasts "How to Fly" using Flight Simulator. Howard can be contacted at hforder@fordertechnicalservices.com.
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