Tour Improvements in Exchange Server Management Tools
Management Console and Management Shell
In Exchange Server 2007 the administration and management experience has been vastly improved from the underlying architecture through to the fit and finish of the graphical user interface. In this tour you will see how the improved design and organizational elements in the Exchange Management Console eases everyday administrative tasks while the new Exchange Management Shell built on Windows PowerShell offers a strong automation and scripting environment.
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Management Console: Improved Design
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 features a new and intuitive console layout. The screen is now divided into four sections. On the left side, the navigation tree is organized by types of configuration and further categorized by server roles. The tree has been reduced from eight levels deep in Exchange Server 2003 to just three levels deep in Exchange Server 2007, a consequence of pulling information out of the tree and displaying it in the result and work panes. The result pane has been enhanced with filtering, allowing you to see just the set of objects that you want to manage in your environment. The work pane automatically gives you more granular objects to manage based on selections in the result pane. This design simplifies navigation as well as provides a richer set of controls as contrasted with previous versions in which you had to drill down several levels in the tree to get to this level of detail. Last but not least is the action pane, which dynamically provides you with the possible actions that can be taken based on the selections in the result and work panes. The action pane streamlines the discovery of tasks that can be taken on an object, instead of relying only on the right mouse button menu.
Server configuration, along with the other configuration branches, offers a rich set of filters that can be saved when you close the console. This is particularly helpful when you are working with the same object set repeatedly or for helpdesks that may require a simplified view of the product.
Management Console: Configuration Types
The left navigation tree is organized into three configuration types. Each configuration group is then organized by the distinct server roles distinct server roles.
The Organizational Configuration branch is where you would go to make organization-wide changes that impact policy—for example, creating transport rules to add disclaimers to all e-mail messages from the legal department.
The Server Configuration branch is where you manage attributes tied directly to a server role. A great example of this is creating storage groups on the Mailbox server role.
The recipient configuration branch is where you manage objects like distribution groups, mailbox users, contacts, and resources such as conference rooms.
Grouping like functions together makes discovering configuration tasks fast, and it is easier to find your way if there is less chance of getting lost in the forest of a deep navigation tree.
Management Console: Toolbox
Like with previous releases of Exchange Server, a set of released and updated tools are available. With Exchange Server 2007, the Toolbox added to the Exchange Management Console contains the most heavily utilized Web release tools. Tools such as the Exchange Best Practice Analyzer are maintained, updated, and launched from here, giving you a single starting place to find all of the management tools you need.
Management Console: Wizard
Some tasks in the action pane launch wizards to create or change configurations. Throughout the console, you will find a very consistent and intuitive wizard interface. Each wizard presents you with a navigation list, so you know the steps that need to be completed and where you are in the process.
In the example of creating mailboxes, you will notice that Exchange Server 2007 now differentiates between types of mailboxes such as users and resources. This improves the calendaring experience and makes it easier to manage rooms as distinct from users.
Gone is the worry of being lost in a sea of wizard input pages because the navigation list on the left side gives you an indication of where you are in the wizard and how many tasks remain.
When the wizard completes, it provides rich results of not just completion time and success, but also the actual command-line task or tasks that were executed to complete the action. Typing CTRL+C lets you copy these results for your records and maybe use the resulting command line as an example to create your own one line commands or even more complex scripts; a great window into learning the power behind the Exchange Management Shell experience.
Management Shell: Windows PowerShell Platform
Every object that is configured and managed through Exchange is done so using the Windows PowerShell technology. The Exchange Management Shell consists of a set of tasks that leverages PowerShell to provide rich automation capabilities, along with reporting and diagnostics.
With all of the management tools built upon PowerShell, the business logic behind managing Exchange is common regardless of whether you are using the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell. Every view and every wizard in the Exchange Management Console is actually calling commands in PowerShell, just like in the wizard example earlier. This means everything that you can do in the Exchange Management Console you can also perform in the Exchange Management Shell.
Management Shell: Exchange Management Shell
Built on PowerShell, the Exchange Management Shell provides an intuitive interface into the management and administration of Exchange. Simple verb-noun pairings are used to view data sets such as “get-mailboxdatabase” or execute tasks such as “move-mailbox”. These tasks can also be combined to accomplish other tasks such as load balancing users across mailbox databases.
The Exchange Management Shell includes a progress bar to display status as well as a rich set of usability features such as tab completion, validation, wildcarding, rich help, and task discoverability using commands like get-excommand. Tasks that once took hundreds of lines of code to perform can now be accomplished with as little as one line of human-readable text, a “one-liner”. For example, the Exchange Management Shell can be used to modify attributes on a large number of users. In the past, this task would have required repetitive manual transactions or time for a script to be created or modified. Making changes in bulk is vastly easier and ensures the accuracy of the changes being made.
Conclusion
From the Exchange Management Console, with its built-in tool box, to the Exchange Management Shell, you have the tools to easily and rapidly manage Exchange. These tools can free you up to implement new functionality like Unified Messaging or further protect your environment with built-in compliance, security, and high availability.