Exchange Server Administration Centre

Exchange Server Administration Centre

Author,

Arun Chaudhary

MCP, MCTS, MCITP

(Exchange 2010)

Exchange Administrator, Book writer,

 Freelancer trainer of Exchange Server

Mail me: arunkalagarh@gmail.com

Visit me: http://exchangeby-arun.blogspot.com

About me: I am working as an Exchange Administrator & also a freelancer trainer of Exchange & other Microsoft Servers; I have 6+ years experience in Microsoft servers. I have written many articles on different – different topics & given Exchange Server training for more than 250 Indian & Inter national clients.

Microsoft Exchange Server is very popular email server now days in the IT companies. Microsoft always try to make some good changes in their products to make them more user friendly & easier to management.

Exchange 2010 also has 3 different ways to manage it.

In the coexistence with the Exchange 2013 Server you will get a brand new feature for managing the Exchange Server, called Exchange Administration Centre (EAC).

Ø      Exchange Management Console {EMC} ( graphical view)

Ø      Exchange Control Panel {ECP} (graphical view)

Ø      Exchange Management Shell {EMS} ( very strong cmdlets & scriptable tool)

These three tolls provide very good management capability to manage the Exchange Server 2010.

But as I discuss in starting of this article, that Microsoft always make some changes in their products to make them more user friendly, so this time I am going to introduce you the brand new feature of Exchange Server that called Exchange Administration Centre.

Exchange Administration Centre (EAC) is completely a web-based interface, which make Exchange Server management easier & user friendly. EAC is look like Windows 8 style.

A short introduction to EAC features.

Quick launch:  EAC launch very quickly & don’t hang your system like EMC loading. It’s very fast & rely on local PowerShell.

More easy Hybrid Management: Using the EAC, you can switch between your on-premises Exchange & Office 365 cloud scenario with in a single click, It support Single Sign On (SSO) to manage your complex & hybrid environment.

Instant Notifications: EAC offers you online (visual) & also offline (email) notification for any feature that is integrated with EAC, no need to refresh user interface to get the latest updates. EAC will notify the updates periodically.

Currently Microsoft integrated these features.

Ø      Import & Export of PST

Ø      Certification expiration

Ø      Mailbox migration.

Me tile and Help option: The Me tile option indicates who’s online the current time. The Me tile also provide a entry point for the help desk administrator to login on the behalf of any user to troubleshoot their problems.

The Help links is the primary Help entry point, which is available in EAC & it is context-sensitive.

New Features Panes: EAC have a excellent way to manage its features.

These are the few feature panes in EAC.

• Recipients Management: This option is look like the Recipient Management option in EMC & also provide you management feature for users, group, room & linked mailbox. It also have a migration entry point & dashboard to monitor all ongoing mailbox migrations in one place.
• Permissions: It include RBAC feature to control your Exchange organization roles & also include a new feature called OWA policy.

• Compliance Management: It include many compliance & eDiscovery features, like: In place discovery, hold period, auditing, Data Loss Prevention, journaling, retention policy & Tags.

• Organization: It covers federation, sharing, apps & address list for your Exchange organization.

• Protection: Provide Anti-Spam & Anti-Malware protection.

• Mail Flow: This feature is used to create the Transport rules, configure delivery reports, accepted domain entry. Email address policy & send & receive connectors.

• Mobile: This feature is used to manage & control your Active Sync mobile device.

• Public Folder management: This feature is used to create & manage the Public Folders & their mailboxes.

• Unified Messaging: Using this feature, an administrator can manage voice mail functionality & policies.

• Servers Management: Using this feature, administrator can manage all the servers configurations, like CAS, MBX & HT. using this you can configure HA (DAG), virtual directories & certificates.

• Hybrid Management: This feature allows you to manage the hybrid Exchange organization.

• Accessibility: Microsoft is trying to make EAC mouse free & have a keyboard shortcut CTRL+F6 to quickly navigate across EAC.

• Web Browser Platform support: EAC can support IE8, 9, 10 & Firefox 13+, Safari 5+ & Google chrome 20+ versions.

Because the EAC is now a web-based management console, you will need to access it by using your web browser using the ECP virtual directory URL. To find the ECP virtual director URL that you need to access the EAC, run the following command:

Get-ECPVirtualDirectory | Format-List InternalURL,ExternalURL

v     To download the EAC go the following link:  

 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh973395.aspx?wt.mc_id=TEC_116_1_33   

Arun Special Note: EAC is fully RBAC-aware. This means that if a certain Feature pane is not applicable or unavailable due to underlying RBAC permissions, EAC will respect the same and not show the respective Feature panes. Additionally, EAC fully supports multiple forest topologies.

                                                            Thanks,

                                                     Arun Chaudhary.