How to Creating mail users in Exchange Server 2007

Mail users are actual accounts in your Active Directory, but their email does not reside within your Exchange environment; they use their own messaging system, Hotmail account, etc. This may sound a lot like a contact, but the difference is that a contact is an object that represents someone who neither has a mailbox in your Exchange environment nor an Active Directory account, whereas the mail user still has an Active Directory account.

To create a mail user in the Exchange Management Console, begin by navigating to the Mail User node under Recipient Configuration in the console tree. In the action pane, click the New Mail User link (Figure A) to start the New Mail User Wizard.



Navigate to the Mail User node:-



Beginning the New Mail User Wizard:-

Since you are creating a user within Active Directory, you first need to provide user account information on the User Information page of the wizard, as shown in Figure 3-35. Then, because the user will utilize an outside messaging system, you will need to provide his or her external email address, as shown in Figure 3-36.



Provide account information when creating a new mail user:-



Used For Referrence: http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid43_gci1333150,00.html

Avoid the Top Ten Microsoft Exchange Migration Headaches

Organizations are taking a serious look at Microsoft exchange Server 2007, which sits on the Microsoft Unified Communications platform. Despite its enterprise e-mail, shared calendars, contacts and voicemail integration with e-mail, some administrators are reluctant to adopt the technology, for fear of a lengthy and expensive migration process. But migrating email and data doesn’t have to be such an arduous task. Read on for our tips about how to avoid the most common Exchange migration headaches.

Headache #1: Cost

IT directors can anticipate the following costs when planning an Exchange 2007 implementation: software licenses for Exchange 2007 and any third-party vendor tools; any new equipment to support the migrated platform, including servers, networking equipment and power appliances.

Licensing and equipment costs need not be prohibitive. Prior to launching a migration project, check your license agreements, as you may already own an independent software license for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 or it may be a part of the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement your organization already has in place.

Even with Exchange 2007’s requirement for 64-bit servers, equipment costs may be less then you budgeted. You may be surprised to learn that most of your organization’s current e-mail environment is already running on 64-bit hardware and that you can reuse it if you are careful to select an appropriate migration approach. If you do find that you require new hardware, consider a scalable solution that will make the most of your investment, such as a blade system.

Headache #2: Lack of Time and Resources

When your team is already buried eyeball deep in current projects and responsibilities, the prospect of undertaking a migration project can seem overwhelming. Tasks that will require IT staff time include: assessing current infrastructure; creating the technical architecture plan; preparing a proof of concept or pilot project for testing purposes and evaluating the results; writing a plan for product deployment; provisioning users and settings; and executing the migration while ensuring user functionality. Each of these tasks is equally important and complicated. But with the right third party tool for your migration project, none are impossible. Talk with the support team for the tool you have chosen and map out a migration plan of attack.

Headache #3: Lack of Experience

It’s a good idea to send any staff members that will be handling the migration to training prior to the project. Microsoft holds a number of on-campus sessions throughout the year that are worthwhile.

If sending staff long distances to training sessions isn’t in your budget for this year, there is an alternative: Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) courses were designed to help your staff understand the platform. MOC offers courses, workshops, clinics and seminars at Microsoft IT Academies located in cities around the world. So find one that’s close to you, and it’s a cost effective way for your team to learn the fundamentals about the Exchange 2007 platform.

Headache #4: Business Continuity Options

Researching and selecting which business continuity or disaster recovery options to implement with Exchange 2007 can be difficult.

You should first ignore the technical requirements and capabilities for each method and instead focus on your organization’s functional requirements and recovery situations. Only after you’ve defined your company’s uptime and recovery conditions should you compare these to the options that Exchange Server 2007 offers.

Pay attention to monetary requirements as you work through this process — you may need to cut your requirements if they exceed your budget or ask for a funding increase.

Headache #5: Downtime and Missed Messages

One of the biggest worries when migrating a mail system is downtime and missed e-mails. Proper planning is important to ensure there is no major or unexpected interruptions when redirecting internet e-mail flow and migrating user mailboxes.

If your organization communicates with customers and partners on a regular basis, you may want to consider upgrading or replacing internet facing servers early in the migration process. Inserting one or more Exchange 2007 Hub Transport or Edge servers into your internet e-mail flow is easy to do and helps guarantee that internet mail will be routed to Exchange once the mailboxes are migrated. Depending on your environment, it’s a good idea to learn about external DNS configuration and the forwarding logic of your gateway provider prior to this step.

Headache #6: Establishing Coexistence

The duration of a migration project is wholly dependent upon the size of the organization — it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year to complete. Users need to be able to message one another and schedule appointments at all times, even while some accounts are on Exchange Server 2007 and others are still residing on the source messaging environment. All employees should see the same global address list, migrated or not.

Everyone should be able to continue work in the shared workspace; changes made to public folders should be visible to any user, regardless of whether he/she is located on the source or the target system. The two messaging environments must coexist effectively.
Coexistence requires synchronization in three key areas: directory, public folder and calendar. The two systems need to be exact copies throughout the migration project. Synchronization should be two-way so that whenever end users update one environment, the change is replicated in the other.

Third-party vendor tools can help with this part of the migration. Look for a product that can synchronize all Active Directory and Exchange data, such as public folders, calendar information and mailbox information.

Headache #7: Migrating from non-Exchange Platforms

Not all organizations are running previous Exchange platforms – some are working with non-Microsoft messaging systems, such as Novell GroupWise orIBM Lotus Notes. Migrations from these platforms to Exchange 2007 are challenging, but not impossible.
Some of the major differences between Exchange and other messaging platforms that can pose a problem are:

• Exchange 2007 uses Active Directory for its user directory; other manufacturers implement their own directories. Maintaining contact information, settings and user profiles are major issues to be taken into account.
• The certificate and encryption services that guarantee communication between users and external contacts are applied differently in alternate messaging platforms.
• Group policies and security models for login and management are different.

There are many solutions in the market that manage migrations from non-Microsoft platforms to Exchange 2007. Companies such as Transend andQuest Software all offer migration products that work with multiple messaging systems. The most important thing to look for in a migration tool is coexistence for migrated and non-migrated users, and a product that guarantees no lost data or downtime. Additional handy features include the ability to automate processes, handle parallel migrations and move archives. Reducing costs and saving staff time are nice functionalities as well.

Headache #8: Storage and Regulatory Compliance

It is critical to evaluate your current environment. Growing organizations often don’t have the mailbox storage quotas or e-mail retention policies needed to maintain database performance. Prior to the migration, assess your current processor, memory and storage use. Talk to legal or human resources to minimize any legal risk and remain compliant with all applicable regulations if you find that mailbox sizes are out of control.

Archiving e-mail before migrating is the best way to reduce the overall volume of e-mail data that needs to be migrated, which can end up saving your organization time and money. Besides lessening storage requirements in the new environment, archiving before you migrate reduces the risk of losing messaging data.

Headache #9: Public Folders

Information stored in public folders will also need to be migrated to the new Exchange environment. The Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 has a new graphical interface for public folder migration and management that helps you easily push the public folder hierarchy from one server to others in the organization.

Rather than migrate all public folders to Exchange 2007, some organizations have decided to move them to SharePoint. Look for a tool that offers automated migration (both individual or on a bulk basis), scheduled migration, content synchronization, permission mapping and multiple migration job handling.

Headache #10: Third-Party Product Integration

Many times through the course of this article, we have suggested using a third-party tool to assist your migration project – modern messaging systems are almost never deployed without one. Third-party integration usually includes one or more of the following: backup agents, antivirus software, message archiving and fax integration. Check with your vendors for versions of their software that support Exchange 2007, as well as guidance for migrating their software.

Test the new versions of software to guarantee that it has the same functionality and that it can run parallel with the old version. If the product has an Outlook component, confirm that it can run with your new version of Outlook.

Source:hdvoice.tmcnet.com

HP surprises itself with virtual Exchange servers

As the volume leader in the x64 server racket, Hewlett-Packard was an early and enthusiastic supporter of VMware and its ESX Server hypervisor for virtualizing servers. But with HP (or rather, Compaq) having long ago established that systems management is one of the key control points in a customer account - and VMware wanting to get more into management tools - the potential for head butting is pretty high.

IT shops don't like head-butting any more than they like finger pointing when something goes wrong, of course, which is why HP was all lovey dovey as it made announcements this week at the VMworld 2008 show in Las Vegas.

HP owns the entire virtualization stack on its Itanium-based Integrity server line, so it doesn't have to partner. Said another way, VMware and Citrix Systems are not supporting Itanium processors with their respective ESX Server and XenServer hypervisors, leaving HP little choice but to create the Integrity Virtual Machine hypervisor from code buried inside HP-UX. Integrity VMs support HP-UX, Linux, Windows, and OpenVMS partitions on Integrity iron and are distinct from the vPar and nPar partitions that HP 9000 servers had.

In any event, HP says that its Insight Dynamics VSE systems management tool, which provisions and manages physical and virtual servers, can interact with and integrate with VMware's VirtualCenter tool, which manages the ESX Server hypervisor and its add-ons. The exact nature of this integration was not detailed, but what users of both sets of tools undoubtedly want is to have all the features of both with whatever interface they are used to seeing - and to be blissfully unaware that there are two tools at work.

With more companies wanting to virtualize Windows and Exchange Server setup to provide fault tolerance and disaster recovery, HP has launched the Virtual Exchange Infrastructure service to help customers plan and implement a virtualized Exchange Server 2007 email and groupware setup running atop VMware's Infrastructure suite of tools (which includes ESX Server for carving up VMs on the iron and management tools to care and feed them). HP says that it can show companies how to virtualize and consolidate their Exchange setups without interrupting day-to-day operations.

"It is somewhat surprising to me the number of people who are interested in this," explains Doug Strain, marketing manager for software in HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers group. "I assumed that our large customers would be more interested in doing bare metal Exchange Servers, and while it is still early days for virtualized Exchange, there is definitely a lot of interest."

One of the reasons why companies might be willing to virtualize big email and database workloads is because the x64 architecture now has hardware-assisted processor, memory, and I/O virtualization that allows VMs to be run without such a punishing performance penalty.

On the disaster recovery front, HP and VMware have integrated their respective tools so they work together on VMs. Specifically, VMware's Site Recovery Manager add-on for ESX Server now knows how to play nicely with HP's Continuous Access Replication software in its EVA midrange disk arrays, which replicates data between mirrored disk arrays. According to Strain, about 85 percent of the virtualized environments that HP has setup using ProLiant and BladeSystem X64 iron for customers uses some kind of shared storage (NAS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel SAN), and most people probably assume it is all running on high-end XP arrays.

Not so. The midrange EVA arrays, which marry well with the two-socket servers that are for now the standard virtualization iron, are getting a lot more traction. And HP's low-end MSA arrays do not have the recovery and storage virtualization features that enable a DR setup.

Another key EVA feature now certified to deal with VMware VMs is Data Protector, which backs up software onto tape. Data Protector now waits for VMware's Consolidated Backup, which gathers all the copies of VMs into one place, before shoving archives out onto tape.

HP also said that its thin clients have been certified to be supported by VMware's Virtual Desktop Manager 2.1 software, a management program for virtualized PCs being fed from server instances to thin clients. HP announced a set of virtual desktop services to help customers figure out how to get rid of PCs and replace them with servers fronted by thin clients.

Source:theregister.co.uk/2008/09/19/hp_vmware_services/

Microsoft release Exchange Servers

As mentioned above, that data from a Microsoft Exchange server to your computer. This means instead of you having to manually press a button to poll the server and ask for changes, or set up a scheduled polling as soon as something changes on the server, it automatically sends the update out.

Every device being handled by a single central Network Operations Center (NOC), devices can connect to any Windows Server running Exchange (typically your business’ Exchange Server).

Microsoft's prices have always been geared to be affordable for the masses. And when entering a new market, it seems to always start low-ball. Microsoft today finally revealed how it will price online services, including Exchange and SharePoint, and how it will share revenue with partners. The company used its annual Worldwide Partner Conference to detail two bundles of services, one that targets workers who spend little time with a PC and one tailored for "information workers" that includes collaboration tools, portals, instant messaging/presence and Web conferencing. When doing the math for Microsoft's new services bundles, has it continued with the affordable theme? The jury is out.

An "information worker" bundle will be priced at $15 per month (and includes hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint services with the not-yet-popular Office Communications Server and Live Meeting). Given that the average enterprise refreshes its desktops and software every three to five years, this equates to $540 per user for a three-year cycle. Will that save you money over the per-seat licenses you pay for now for Exchange?

If desktop support really does go away because users are getting the service from the cloud (but come on, how likely is that?), then this is probably a bargain. Hardware costs are killed -- that's true -- but they are relatively cheap these days and network costs could rise. High-volume deals can certainly do better than $15 per seat, too.

The entry-level services fee at $3 per user, per month, seems more in line, but the limited service may not fit the average enterprise. And of course, Microsoft's channel gets hosed when an online service is only $36 per user, per year, and includes no hardware. At 12% for the first contract and only 6% in years after, it takes an awful lot of users to make a living selling the Microsoft cloud. Microsoft resellers tend to service the small business, not the enterprise, so it's hard to see how they will benefit from this pricing scheme, except if they can tack on additional server service fees to the sales. In that case, buyers beware.

Even so, a much bigger concern for all users will be data portability. How will Microsoft "lock in" its customers once they move to the cloud? Will it hold customer data for ransom, or will a customer be able to grab its data and switch vendors anytime it wants to?