• Mail Routing with Exchange Server 2007
• Henrik Walther's Exchange Server 2003 Security book -- Order Today!
• MSExchange.org Learning Zone Articles of Interest
• KB Articles of the Month
• Tip of the Month
• MSExchange Links of the Month
• Ask Henrik Walther a question

1. Mail Routing with Exchange Server 2007

Welcome to the July version of the MSExchange.org newsletter! By the time this newsletter has hit your inbox, Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 should have been released to the public, but I still hope at least some of you have the time to read it. :-)

This time I want to talk a bit about the way Exchange Server 2007 routes mail throughout your organization. As some of you may already know it's the Hub Transport server role, which is responsible for and provides message transport throughout your Exchange organization, much like is the case with bridgehead servers in an Exchange 2000/2003 organization. But the similarity ends here, because messages sent between the Exchange 2000/2003 servers are sent using SMTP, and if you have a relatively large Exchange organization with multiple locations, you add the Exchange servers which share a reliable high-speed connection to specific routing groups (typically based on location). You configure routing group connectors (although SMTP connectors can be used as well) between the routing groups in the organization, which is done by specifying the source and destination bridgehead server. Each routing group has a dedicated routing group master, which is the server that's responsible for updating the link state table for the respective routing group, so that any updates can be replicated with the link state tables in the other routing groups.

With Exchange Server 2007 the way messages are routed between the Bridgehead servers, which in Exchange Server 2007 now are called Hub Transport servers, has changed considerably. You no longer need to setup routing group connectors between routing groups in the Exchange organization when you design your Exchange topology, actually the routing group functionality has been removed from the Exchange product. Why has this flexible way of routing messages throughout an Exchange organization been removed? I hear some of you grumble. Well routing groups actually have several drawbacks such as long stretches of time where two servers disagree about a connection state, which in many situations can cause routing loops. Another is that it can be quite confusing to track why a message took a given route at a given point in time, because the link state table for the Exchange topology was never persisted or logged. Lastly the routing groups and routing group connector concept forced Exchange admins to recreate and mimic the underlying network, which can be a quite time consuming task.

So how do you set up your routing topology in Exchange Server 2007 then? Well you don't! Because Exchange Server 2007 is a site-aware application, which means that it can determine its own Active Directory site membership and the Active Directory site membership of other servers by querying Active Directory. So instead of using its own routing group topology, Exchange makes use of the AD directory service site topology to determine how messages are transported in the organization. This means that the Hub Transport servers in your Exchange organization retrieve information from Active Directory in order to determine how messages should be routed between servers. You need to deploy a Hub Transport server in each site containing a Mailbox server, which means that when user A in one site sends a message to user B in another site, the mailbox server contacts the Hub Transport server in its own site, which then routes the message to the Hub Transport server in user B's site, which then delivers the message to the mailbox server that hosts user B's mailbox.

If you want more insight into the new way Exchange 2007 routes mail in the organization, I can recommend you read the Planning Active Directory section in the Exchange Server 2007 Product Documentation.

That was all for this time. Should you have any ideas for content in future editions of the MSExchange.org newsletter or on my blog, you're more than welcome to shoot me an email at Henrik@msexchange.org.

2. Henrik Walther's Exchange Server 2003 Security book - Order Today!

By Henrik Walther Are you among the persons who like the articles I write for MSExchange.org? Then this book is definitely for you. It provides you with step by step instructions on how you get your Exchange Server properly secured. The book covers topics such as how to: Secure OWA 2003 (including many real world tips and tricks) Configure and secure SMTP Setup protocol and client encryption Delegate and control permissions Combating spam and virus

Click here to Order your copy today

3. MSExchange.org Learning Zone Articles of Interest

We have a great group of articles in the Learning Zone that will help you get a handle on your most difficult configuration issues. Here are just a few of the newer and more interesting articles:

• Introduction to Exchange 2007 Server Roles
• Backing Up Exchange with Data Protection Manager
• Securing E-Mails with S/MIME and Smartcards in Exchange 2003
• A First Look at the New Exchange 2007 System Management Console
• Configuring Incoming and Outgoing Email for Windows Small Business Server 2003
• Creating Exchange Users with Excel (Part 2)
• Exchange Server 2003 and the Device Emulator 1.0 with MSFP
• Finding Duplicate SMTP Addresses
• Uncovering the New Outlook 2007 AutoConnect feature

4. KB Articles of the Month

Here are some interesting and useful MSExchange related articles posted by Microsoft in the last month:

• Exchange Server static port mappings
• Some of the Lotus Notes contacts in Active Directory are removed when the DirSync process is interrupted in Exchange Server 2003
• Error message when you try to use Outlook Web Access to connect to Exchange Server 2003: "404 Page not found"
• Other messages are not delivered when delivery fails for an NDR message in an MTA local delivery queue in Exchange Server 2003
• Error message when Exchange Server 2003 tries to retrieve compressed content in an ISA 2004 organization: "The request is not supported"
• Your display name is not removed from your e-mail alias when you send a message to a recipient who is outside the Exchange Server 2003 organization
• After you modify a FreeDoc item in a public folder by using a WebDAV client, the FreeDoc item is not replicated in Exchange Server 2003
• The Store.exe process may use 100 percent of the CPU resources when an Exchange Server 2003 user tries to obtain free/busy data from a calendar from another messaging system
• Error message when you try to synchronize a Windows Mobile 5.0-based device in Exchange Server 2003: "0x85010004"
• Support WebCast: Spam filters in Microsoft Exchange 2003
• You cannot view the Free/Busy information for a user in Outlook Web Access on Exchange Server 2003

5. Tip of the Month

This month I, like last month, want to share a little OWA 2007 tip with you.

Through the years Exchange admins and especially end-users have had the wish of being able to open additional mailboxes in Outlook Web Access, just like it's possible in the Outlook MAPI client. As long as you have the appropriate permissions to access another user's mailbox this is possible, but only by opening a new Internet Explorer window where you type http://server/exchange/mailboxname, and then enter your credentials once again so that a new OWA session is established. Luckily the OWA team had this on their list of things to improve, when developing OWA 2007, and although we're still not able to open additional mailboxes inside the same OWA session, it's gotten a lot easier to open another user's mailbox via OWA 2007.

With OWA 2007 you can, in the toolbar at the top of the OWA window, click on your name which can be found between the Options and the Log Off buttons. When you do so you're able to enter the name of the mailbox you want to open, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1

The mailbox will then open in a new Internet Explorer window.

6. MSExchange Links of the Month

Welcome to Exchange Server 2007 (by Terry Myerson)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/articles/e2k7welcome.mspx

Exchange Server 2007 Product Documentation
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/E2k7Help

Download details: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 Help
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=555f5974-9258-475a-b150-0399b133fede&DisplayLang=en

Exchange Server 2007 Sample Scripts
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/message/exch2007/default.mspx

Thinking about Mailbox and Message Size Limits
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/07/06/428213.aspx

More Messaging related IT Showcase papers
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/07/05/428212.aspx

Karim Batthish on Exchange 2007 Web services and programmability (video)
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/06/30/428208.aspx

Becky Benfield on Exchange 2007 high availability and disaster recovery! (video)
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/06/29/428187.aspx

7. Ask Henrik Walther a question

QUESTION: After reading your article covering the Intelligent Message Filter version 2 (IMF v2), I was wondering whether it's supported to make use of wild cards characters, when adding words and/or phrases to the Custom Weighting Filter XML file?

ANSWER: No unfortunately the Custom Weighting Filter (CWF) in the Intelligent Message Filter version 2 (IMF v2) doesn't support making use of wild card characters when adding words or phrases to the XML file, but there should be a good chance the Content Filter (which is the next generation of IMF) in Exchange Server 2007 will support wild card characters.