Tuesday 28 May 2013

Overview of Exchange 2010 Server Roles


A server role is a unit that logically groups the required features and components needed to perform a specific function in the messaging environment. The requirement of a server role is that it is a server that could be run as an atomic unit of scalability. A server role is composed of a group of features.
Server roles, the primary unit of deployment, enable administrators to easily choose which features are installed on an Exchange server. Logically grouping features in server roles offers the following advantages:
  • Reduces attack surface on an Exchange server.
  • Allows you to install and configure an Exchange server the way you intend to use it.
  • Offers the ability to fully customize a server to support your business goals and needs.
The following figure illustrates a domain with each server role deployed.
A domain with each server role deployed
Exchange 2010 includes the following server roles:
  • Mailbox Server   This server hosts mailboxes and public folders. For more information about the Exchange 2010 Mailbox server role
  • Client Access Server   This is the server that hosts the client protocols, such as Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4), Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS), Outlook Anywhere, Availability service, and Autodiscover service. The Client Access Server also hosts Web services. For more information about the Exchange 2010 Client Access server role
  • Unified Messaging Server   This is the server that connects a Private Branch eXchange (PBX) system to Exchange 2010. For more information about the Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging server role

  • Hub Transport Server   This is the mail routing server that routes mail within the Exchange organization. For more information about the Exchange 2010 Hub Transport server role
  • .
  • Edge Transport Server   This is the mail routing server that typically sits at the perimeter of the topology and routes mail in to and out of the Exchange organization. For more information about the Exchange 2010 Edge Transport server role

Overview of the Mailbox Server Role

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, the Mailbox server role is one of several server roles that you can install and configure on a server running Windows Server 2008. The Mailbox server role is the most common server role and is at the core of an Exchange organization. Servers on which the Mailbox server role is installed are called Mailbox servers.
Mailbox servers perform the following functions:
  • Host mailbox databases
  • Provide e-mail storage
  • Host public folder databases
  • Calculate e-mail address policies
  • Generate address lists and offline address books (OABs)
  • Conduct Multi-Mailbox Searches
  • Provide high availability and site resiliency
  • Provide content indexing
  • Provide messaging records management (MRM) and retention policies

Client Access

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, the Client Access server role supports the Outlook Web App and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync client applications, and the Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) and Internet Message Access Protocol version 4rev1 (IMAP4) protocols. The Client Access server role also provides access to free/busy data by using the Availability service and enables certain clients to download automatic configuration settings from the Autodiscover service. You must install the Client Access server role in every Exchange organization and every Active Directory site that has the Mailbox server role installed.

Unified Messaging


Unified Messaging combines voice messaging and e-mail into one Inbox, which can be accessed from the telephone and the computer. Unified Messaging integrates Exchange Server 2010 with the telephony network in your organization and brings the features found in Unified Messaging to the core of the Exchange Server product line.

Overview of the Hub Transport Server Role


Deployed inside your Active Directory forest, the Hub Transport server role handles all mail flow inside the organization, applies transport rules, applies journaling policies, and delivers messages to a recipient's mailbox. Messages that are sent to the Internet are relayed by the Hub Transport server to the Edge Transport server role that's deployed in the perimeter network. Messages that are received from the Internet are processed by the Edge Transport server before they're relayed to the Hub Transport server. If you don't have an Edge Transport server, you can configure the Hub Transport server to relay Internet messages directly or utilize a third-party smart host. You can also install and configure the Edge Transport server agents on the Hub Transport server to provide anti-spam and antivirus protection inside the organization, although this isn't recommended.
You can install the Hub Transport server role on the same hardware with any other internal server role or on a server that's dedicated to the Hub Transport server role. You must deploy a Hub Transport server role in each Active Directory site that contains a Mailbox server role. Deploying more than one Hub Transport server per site provides redundancy. When you install more than one Hub Transport server in an Active Directory site, the connections are distributed.
The message-processing scenarios that you can manage on the Hub Transport server role are described in the following sections.

The Hub Transport server role processes all messages that are sent inside the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 organization before the messages are delivered to a recipient's Inbox or are routed to users outside the organization. There are no exceptions to this behavior; messages are always passed through a server that runs the Hub Transport server role.
Messages are submitted to the Hub Transport server in three ways: through SMTP submission, from the Pickup directory, or when a user inside the organization sends a message, which is picked up from the user's Outbox by the store driver. The store driver is a software component of the Hub Transport server that delivers inbound messages to Exchange stores, the databases that contain public folder and mailbox stores.
When messages are submitted to the Hub Transport server, they're processed by the categorizer. The categorizer is a component of Exchange transport that processes all inbound messages and determines what to do with the messages based on information about the intended recipients. In Exchange 2010, the Hub Transport server uses the categorizer to expand distribution lists and to identify alternative recipients and forwarding addresses. After the categorizer retrieves full information about the recipients, it uses that information to apply policies, route the messages, and perform content conversion. Messages are then delivered locally by the store driver to a recipient's mailbox, or they're delivered remotely by using SMTP to send messages to another transport server. Messages that are sent by users in your organization are picked up from the sender's Outbox by the store driver and are put in the Submission queue on a server that runs the Hub Transport server role.
With a collection of transport agents, you can configure rules and settings that are applied as messages enter and leave the mail flow components. You can create messaging policy and rule settings that are designed to meet different regulations and that can easily be changed to adapt to your organization's requirements. The transport-based messaging policy and compliance features include server-based rules that you configure to enforce your organization's compliance scenarios and the Journaling agent that acts to enforce message retention. For more information
Exchange 2010 provides anti-spam and antivirus protection for messages. Although these features are designed for use in the perimeter network on the Edge Transport server role, the Edge Transport agents can also be configured on the Hub Transport server. By default, these agents aren't enabled on the Hub Transport server role. To use the anti-spam features on the Hub Transport server, you must register the agents in a configuration file and enable the features that you want to use by running a provided Exchange Management Shell script. You install and enable the antivirus agent in a separate operation. For more information

Overview of the Edge Transport Server Role


In Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, the Edge Transport server role is deployed in your organization's perimeter network. Designed to minimize the attack surface, the Edge Transport server handles all Internet-facing mail flow, which provides SMTP relay and smart host services for the Exchange organization. Additional layers of message protection and security are provided by a series of agents that run on the Edge Transport server and act on messages as they're processed by the message transport components. These agents support the features that provide protection against viruses and spam and apply transport rules to control message flow.
The computer that has the Edge Transport server role installed doesn't have access to Active Directory. All configuration and recipient information is stored in Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS). To perform recipient lookup tasks, the Edge Transport server requires data that resides in Active Directory. This data is synchronized to the Edge Transport server using EdgeSync. EdgeSync is a collection of processes that are run on a computer that has the Hub Transport server role installed to establish one-way replication of recipient and configuration information from Active Directory to the AD LDS instance on an Edge Transport server. The Microsoft Exchange EdgeSync service copies only the information that's required for the Edge Transport server to perform anti-spam configuration tasks and the information about the connector configuration that's required to enable end-to-end mail flow. The Microsoft Exchange EdgeSync service performs scheduled updates so that the information in AD LDS remains current.
You can install more than one Edge Transport server in the perimeter network. Deploying more than one Edge Transport server provides redundancy and failover capabilities for your inbound message flow. You can load-balance SMTP traffic to your organization between Edge Transport servers by defining more than one mail exchange (MX) resource record with the same priority in the Domain Name System (DNS) database for your mail domain. You can achieve consistency in configuration between multiple Edge Transport servers by using cloned configuration scripts.
The message-processing scenarios that you can manage on the Edge Transport server role are described in the following sections.

Servers that run the Edge Transport server role accept messages that come into the Exchange 2010 organization from the Internet. After the messages are processed by the Edge Transport server, they are routed to Hub Transport servers inside the organization.
All messages that are sent to the Internet from the organization are routed to Edge Transport servers after the messages are processed by the Hub Transport server. You can configure the Edge Transport server to use DNS to resolve MX resource records for external SMTP domains, or you can configure the Edge Transport server to forward messages to a smart host for DNS resolution.

In Exchange 2010, the anti-spam and antivirus features provide services to block viruses and spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail, at the network perimeter. Most viruses use spam-like tactics to gain access to your organization and to entice users to open an e-mail message. If you can filter out most of your spam, you're also more likely to capture viruses before they enter your organization.
Spammers use a variety of techniques to send spam into your organization. Servers that run the Edge Transport server role help prevent users in your organization from receiving spam by providing a collection of agents that work together to provide different layers of spam filtering and protection. Establishing tarpitting intervals on connectors makes e-mail harvesting attempts ineffective.

Edge Transport rules are used to control the flow of messages that are sent to or received from the Internet. The Edge Transport rules help protect corporate network resources and data by applying an action to messages that meet specified conditions. These rules are configured for each server. Edge Transport rule conditions are based on data, such as specific words or text patterns in the message subject, body, header, or From address, the spam confidence level (SCL), or attachment type. Actions determine how the message is processed when a specified condition is true. Possible actions include quarantine of a message, dropping or rejecting a message, appending additional recipients, or logging an event. Optional exceptions exempt particular messages from having an action applied.

You use address rewriting to present a consistent appearance to external recipients of messages from your Exchange 2010 organization. You configure the Address Rewriting agent on the Edge Transport server role to enable the modification of the SMTP addresses on inbound and outbound messages. Address rewriting is especially useful when a newly merged organization that has several domains wants to present a consistent appearance of e-mail addresses to external recipients.

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