We would like to welcome Microsoft MVP Henrik Walther to our team of authors as he presents his first article to MSExchange.org readers. As companies seems to start their Exchange 2003 deployments way faster, than was the case with Exchange 2000, I thought it was about time to provide you with information on how you handle an in-place upgrade from Exchange 2000 to 2003.
SMTP logging can, at times, the key to troubleshooting many mail problems by providing valuable information regarding incoming mail. It can also be used for providing statistics on mail flow from the Internet. The following article describes the secrets of logging SMTP activities for troubleshooting and other purposes.
A query-based distribution group is a new additional type of distribution group in Exchange 2003. This new type of distribution group provides the same functionality as a standard distribution group; however, instead of specifying static user memberships, a query-based distribution group allows you to use an LDAP query to dynamically build membership in the distribution group (for example All employees with a special group membership). Using query-based distribution groups we can reduce the administration costs dramatically. However a Query-based Distribution Group needs more Server resources like CPU power and RAM.
Exchange 2000, internally, unlike traditional SMTP mail servers, does not rely on DNS MX records for mail delivery within the organization. Instead, it maintains a dynamic routing table used to transport mail around the Exchange organization. However, Exchange 2000 does depend on DNS for resolving host names, finding global catalog servers and finding other mail servers on the Internet. Also, without MX records on Internet DNSs, you wouldn't get mail from the Internet into your corporate environment.
The RPC over HTTP protocol allows your full Outlook 2003 MAPI clients to connect to Exchange 2003 Servers using HTTP/HTTPS. This solves the problem remote Outlook 2003 users have when located behind restrictive firewalls. The trick is to figure out how to properly configure the Outlook 2003 client to use this protocol. If you have remote users who need to access Exchange 2003 via Outlook 2003, then check out this article and see how to configure Outlook 2003 to use RPC over HTTP.
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