Exchange Server 2010 : The Exchange Management Console

The Exchange Management Console is the Graphical User Interface for managing the Exchange Server 2010 environment. The Exchange Management Console is an MMC 3.0 snap-in and consists of several panes (see Figure 1 below).

• Navigation Pane – this is the left-hand pane where the Exchange Organization is visible, and it features different leaves like the Organization Configuration, the Server Configuration, the Recipient Configuration and the Toolbox.

• Results Pane – this is the middle pane where the results about the selection in the Navigation Pane are visible.

• Actions Pane – this is the right-hand pane, where actions that need to be performed against the selections made in the other two panes are chosen.

When the Organization Configuration in the Navigation Pane is selected, the organization-wide configuration of the Exchange Organization can be managed, which all the Exchange servers in the entire organization will share. In the organizational configuration, information can be set for example about Send Connectors, Accepted Domains, Email Address Policies, Database Availability Group, Mailboxes, etc. The Server Configuration in the Navigation pane contains all the server-specific configuration options, such as a particular server's Receive Connectors, Outlook Web App settings or Outlook Anywhere settings.

Figure 1. The Exchange Management Console with the three panes.

Lastly, the Recipient Configuration contains all configuration options regarding the following recipients:

• Mailbox

• Distribution Group

• Mail Contact

• Disconnected Mailbox

• Move Request

1 PowerShell and the EMC

The easiest way to learn the PowerShell commands you'll need to manage Exchange Server 2010 is to remember that, as the Exchange Management Console is written on top of the Exchange Management Shell, every action in the Management Console is translated to a Management Shell command. This is important because it's possible to take an action in the EMC, and then see its PowerShell equivalent.

For example, to mail-enable a user in the Management Console:

All of the configuration information that you've just entered is being translated to a Management Shell command on the fly, and this command is executed then. When the command is executed the window shown in Figure 2 appears.

Figure 2. The results of Mail Enabling a user.

In the lower part you see "To copy the contents of this page, press CTRL+C." If you press CTRL+C the contents of this dialog is copied to the Windows clipboard, which contains the following:

This is the actual command that was executed, and this is by far the easiest way to learn the PowerShell commands.

2 Evolution of the Exchange Management Console

If you're familiar with Exchange Server 2007, the Exchange Management Console should be familiar as well. There are some changes though, primarily because of architectural changes in Exchange Server 2010. Mailbox Databases, for example, are not on the server level as in Exchange Server 2007, but on the organization level. For managing the Mailbox Database, the Organization Configuration now needs to be selected instead of the Server Configuration (as is the case in Exchange Server 2007).

Since Mailbox Databases are on the organization level, individual Mailbox Database names must be unique across the entire organization. This is the reason why default Mailbox Databases are created with names like "Mailbox Database 0889073255" and "Mailbox Database 1563944384."

A new feature in the Exchange Management Console is the option to manage multiple Exchange organizations in a single Console (see Figure 4). If you open the Exchange Management Console, by default the Exchange On-Premises organization of which the Exchange Server is a member is shown.

Figure 3. Mailbox databases are on organization level in Exchange Server 2010.

In the Actions Pane, click "Add Exchange forest" and enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of another Exchange organization you have access to. Enter the proper credentials and two separate Exchange organizations can be managed at once from a single console. The ability to manage multiple locations and multiple organizations is one of the things that Exchange Server 2010 now does very well.

Figure 4. Managing two Exchange organizations from one Management Console!