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Microsoft Exchange 2007 Server Roles
Continuing our series on Exchange 2007, this article focuses on Server Roles, which have changed significantly in the new release. Server Roles (i.e. groups of features or functions) allow you to deploy only the features and services necessary on a given server. With Exchange 2007 you have much greater flexibility to create a topology that fits your unique requirements, as Exchange 2007 provides 5 different server roles, an expansion from the current limitation of 2. You must have at least one Client Access Server role and one Hub Transport Server role in every Active Directory site that has a Mailbox Server; the other roles are optional depending on your circumstances.
- Mailbox Server – The Mailbox Server role provides the basic message storage for your organization and includes mailboxes, public folders and other core services such as calendaring. Exchange 2007 can support up to 50 stores (i.e. mail databases) per server. These stores can be deployed as individual storage groups or can be bundled together into one. How you choose to configure will be based on your organization’s specific needs and storage availability. One key design factor to keep in mind: the more the stores are split up, the better performance you will get with backups, restores and routine maintenance.
The Mailbox server role is the only role that can be deployed as a cluster. If you will be using clustering, you’ll need to install the Mailbox server on dedicated hardware.
- Hub Transport Server – The Hub Transport Server role provides mail transport services to your Exchange infrastructure. Every message that is sent or received by the users in your organization is processed by a Hub Transport Server, which allows you to:
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Track mail more effectively
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Create and enforce server-based transport rules based on your compliance rule (including rules that flag for certain words or phrases)
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Provide granular journaling for individual mailboxes in any mail store.
Use of the Hub Transport Server ensures that no message can bypass your server-based rules or journaling policies, thus guaranteeing that email compliance requirements are met – an increasingly critical issue for all organizations.
- Client Access Server – The Client Access Server role replaces the Front End Server from Exchange 2000 and 2003. It provides mailbox access to clients accessing Exchange with POP3, IMAP4, OWA, Outlook Anywhere (previously RPC over HTTPS) and Active Sync.
- Unified Messaging Server – The Unified Messaging Server role is new to Exchange, and cannot interoperate with any previous versions of Exchange. This role integrates with your IP/VoIP gateway or IP-PBX to provide email access to voice mails as well as telephone access to messages, contacts and calendar items. Watch for more on Unified Messaging, an expanding technology, in future editions of this newsletter.
- Edge Transport Server – The Edge Transport Server role is typically deployed in your DMZ and is used to provide mail transport between Exchange and the internet. It can be used to provide anti-spam and anti-virus protection, as well as messaging security services using special rules called transport agents. This is the only server role that cannot reside on the same server as the other roles.
As you can see from the expansion of Server Roles, Exchange 2007 brings not only added capability but a whole new model to server configuration. Thinking through your needs and designing appropriately will be especially critical with this upgrade.
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