Administering an Exchange Server 2007 Environment : Performing Common Tasks (part 2) - Managing User Mailboxes, Managing Mailbox Locations

10/12/2013 1:44:16 AM

2. Managing User Mailboxes

Administrators can utilize the Exchange Management Console to perform a wide variety of user-specific configurations on an individual mailbox. Each mail-enabled object in an Exchange environment has specific settings that can be configured for that individual mailbox. This can come in handy when an individual user has different requirements than other users located in the same database. Settings on the database that apply to the majority of users can be overwritten using these individual settings.

Several mailbox configurable properties are available on individual user mailboxes, including mailbox settings, mail flow settings, and mailbox features.

Mailbox Settings

Mailbox settings address storage quotas and records management functionality. Some of the detailed functions covered in mailbox settings are as follows:

Storage Quotas-— By default, individual mailboxes are configured to use the mailbox database defaults for storage quotas. However, you can select the Storage Quotas tab in the individual mailbox properties to override this setting. By removing the checkmark from Use Mailbox Database Defaults, you can configure custom Warning, Prohibit Send, and Prohibit Send and Receive quotas for the mailbox. In addition, you can specify a deleted item retention time that differs from the database default.
Messaging Records Management— On this tab within the mailbox properties, you can configure a Managed folder mailbox policy that differs from the database default. This setting can be turned on for all messages, or can be turned on for a particular time period using the Start and End date feature located here.

Mail Flow Settings

Mail flow settings can be modified to allow for changes in delivery options, message size restrictions, and message delivery restrictions. Some specifics on the mail flow settings are as follows:

Delivery Options— Utilizing this tab, you can enable other user accounts to “Send on Behalf” of this user. You can also configure the mailbox to forward messages to another mailbox and can dictate whether the original recipient should receive a copy, or if the message should only go to the forwarded mailbox. You can also use this tab to set recipient limits on the mailbox, stating the maximum number of recipients that user can send to at a time.
Message Size Restrictions— Utilizing this option, you can mandate the maximum message size that a user can send or receive. Bear in mind, by setting different sizes for these two settings, you can run into a situation where a user is able to receive a message, but cannot forward it (or reply with the original message attached) because he has a lower Sending Message Size restriction. Likewise, if the Receive limits are lower than the Send limits, he might be able to send a message to a fellow employee, but not receive a reply that includes the original message. Set these settings carefully.
Message Delivery Restrictions— With this feature, you can dictate whether an individual mailbox can receive messages from all senders, or only specified senders. You can require that all senders are authenticated, or configure the mailbox to reject messages from particular senders.

Mailbox Features

Several property options for mailbox features allow for changes in settings for Outlook Web Access (OWA), Exchange ActiveSync, unified messaging, and the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) communications protocol. Specific details on these mailbox feature properties are as follows:

Outlook Web Access— Although there are no properties to be configured on this option, you can elect whether to allow the user to access his mailbox utilizing OWA. This setting can be set to Enable or Disable. By default, OWA access is enabled for all user mailboxes in an organization.
Exchange ActiveSync— This feature can be enabled or disabled for an individual mailbox. If enabled, you have the option in the properties to apply an Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy for the mailbox. By default, Exchange ActiveSync is enabled for all user mailboxes in an organization.
Unified Messaging— You have the option to enable or disable unified messaging for the mailbox using this feature setting.
MAPI— With this setting, you can dictate whether the user can access his mailbox from a MAPI-enabled client. You have the option to enable or disable MAPI access. By default, MAPI access is enabled for all user mailboxes in an organization.

3. Managing Mailbox Locations

Because Exchange 2007 is designed to be implemented on 64-bit systems, there is improved performance and capacity for individual servers. The Enterprise Edition of Exchange Server 2007 now supports as many as 50 storage groups per server. Although a storage group can contain as many as five databases, there is a limit of 50 databases per server.

When designing your organization’s mail storage solution, you should keep the following in mind:

Decreased database restoration time— Whether because of catastrophic server failure or severe database corruption, there is always the possibility of the loss of a server or a mail database. This possibility is the driving force behind the need for comprehensive server backup policies and procedures. If the need to recover a server or database from your backups ever comes to pass, smaller databases can be recovered faster than larger ones simply because of the amount of data to be transferred. Whether your company prioritizes management, customer service, or sales departments, by breaking key users apart from the pack and placing their mailboxes into separate, smaller databases, there is the potential to recover these users quickly, get them online, and then move on to recovering the remaining users.
Distribution of user load— Users can be broken up into separate mailbox storage groups or databases. The benefit of this is to mitigate risk by distributing your user load. You have probably heard the phrase “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” This concept follows that principle: If all of your users have their mailboxes stored on a single server, something as simple as an unplanned server reboot, or a disconnected network cable, can bring your entire organization down. By distributing your user load across multiple databases, storage groups, servers, or even sites, you can increasingly mitigate the possibility of a single point of failure negatively impacting your entire organization.
User mailbox policies and restrictions— Users can also be broken out into separate mailbox databases to ease user interruption caused by the implementation of storage limits and mailbox deletion policies. For example, if users in your Customer Service department are allowed 100MB of mail storage, but users in your Sales department are allowed 500MB, this can easily be implemented by maintaining the users in separate databases and setting the policies on the database, rather than on individual users. You can see the options for setting message size restrictions on a database in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Mailbox Database Properties dialog box.

Managing Email Addresses

When a new mail-enabled user is created in your Exchange environment, the creation of their primary SMTP address is controlled by a recipient policy. By default, the recipient policy creates two email addresses: an X400 address and a primary SMTP address that is formatted as First Initial, Middle Initial, Last Name at your default organization. For example, user James A. Weinhardt at companyabc.com would have a default SMTP address of [email protected].

However, the default behavior of this recipient policy can easily be modified to create primary SMTP addresses that conform to your organization’s standard. For example, if your organization uses [email protected] as their standard SMTP address, you can configure the recipient policy to generate this address for you when the user mailbox is created. To do so, perform the following procedure:

1.	Start the Exchange Management Console.
2.	In the console tree, select Organization Configuration, then select Hub Transport.
3.	In the results pane, select the E-Mail Address Policies tab, and then highlight the default policy.
4.	In the action pane, click Edit.
5.	On the Introduction page, when modifying the Default Policy, all of the options are hard-coded and cannot be changed. If you are creating an additional policy, these settings can be modified. Click Next to continue.
6.	On the Conditions page, leave the default settings and click Next to continue.
7.	On the E-Mail Addresses page, you can see the two default addresses that are generated. To modify the SMTP address, under SMTP, select the policy and click Edit.
8.	By default, this is set to Use Alias. To modify the policy, click the E-Mail Address Local Part check box, and then select the appropriate SMTP naming standard for your organization. For available options, see Figure 3. In the example, First Name.last name is selected. Select the appropriate entry, and then, under E-Mail Address Domain, use the drop-down box to select from the available email domains. After you are ready, click OK to continue. Figure 3. SMTP email address selections.
9.	You should now be back at the E-Mail Addresses page. Click Next to continue.
10.	On the Schedule page, specify when the email address policy will be applied. Note that if you select a time and date in the future, the wizard will remain open until the countdown has completed. Select the appropriate option, and click Next to continue.
11.	On the Edit E-Mail Address Policy page, the Configuration Summary is shown. Review the policy to ensure all is correct, and then click Edit to continue.
12.	On the Completion page, a summary is shown informing you how many items were modified, how many succeeded, and how many failed. Click Finish to continue.

After this policy has been applied, existing users will have a new SMTP email address generated that conforms to the policy and it will be set as their primary (reply-to) address. Previously assigned addresses will remain in place as secondary addresses. Users created from this point on, however, will have only the new address, and it will be set as their primary SMTP address.

Note the difference in the two users shown in Figures 4 and 5. The first, James Weinhardt, shown in Figure 4, was created prior to the modification of the policy. The second, John Weinhardt, shown in Figure 5, was created after the policy was modified.