Mail Flow in Exchange 2007 server (Draft Version)

The Exchange 2007 transport pipeline consists of the following components and processes:


SMTP Receive When an Email is received at the Edge Transport server, anti-spam and antivirus agents filter connections and content of the Email and help to identify the sender and the recipient of a Email. Once Email is known as clean with no virus and with a valid sender's domain stamps, Email is allowed to enter the organisation.

When Email is messages are received at a Hub Transport server, transport rules and conditions are checked and applied, if any anti-spam and antivirus agents are configured, these agents provide an additional layer of anti-spam and antivirus protection to the Email.

An Email goes to various events at The SMTP Receive session before it is accepted into the organization. Once Email complete all checks through SMTP Receive and is not rejected by receive events or by an anti-spam and antivirus agent, it is put in the Submission queue.

Submission - Where Submission process takes place, In which Email is submitted into a Submission queue. Then from there the categorizer will pick Emails for categorization.

Categorizer - On the Edge Transport server categorization is a short process in which the message is put directly in the delivery queue and from the delivery queue, the message is routed to a computer that is running a Hub Transport server role in the organization.



On the Hub Transport server, the categorizer completes the actual categorization steps like Recipient resolution, Addressing, Expansion, Bifurcation, Content conversion and mail flow rules that are defined by the receipient organization are applied. After messages have been categorized, they are put into a delivery queue.

Delivery Queue - A mailbox delivery queue delivers the message to a local mailbox by using the Store driver. A remote delivery queue delivers the message to a remote recipient through a Send connector.

Local Delivery - Emails that are sent to a recipient with a mailbox in the same Active Directory site as the Hub Transport server on which categorization is carried out are delivered locally. All Emails delivered locally are picked up from a delivery queue by the Store driver and put in the recipient’s inbox on a Mailbox server.

SMTP Send Emails that are sent to recipients with a mailbox in the Active Directory sites that differs from the Hub Transport server role on which categorization occurred are delivered remotely or outside the organization. All Emails that are sent to a different Active Directory site, to a Send connector of a Hub Transport server that can deliver the message to the intended recipient. All Emails those are required to deliver through the Internet must be routed through a Send connector to an Edge Transport server that can send messages to the Internet for delivery outside the organization.

Client Access and Unified Messaging Scenarios Several client access scenarios and Unified Message scenarios do not interact directly with the transport pipeline. Users of Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Office Outlook Web Access, Outlook by Phone, and Exchange ActiveSync interact directly with the Client Access server role, Unified Messaging server role, and Mailbox server role to access their mailbox. In each case, when mail is sent, the message is put in the sender’s outbox directly on the Mailbox server by Outlook or the Client Access server on behalf of the sender.

After the message is put in the sender’s outbox, the Store driver is alerted by the Microsoft Exchange Mail Submission service, retrieves the message from the sender’s Outbox, and then puts it into the Submission queue on a Hub Transport server in the same Active Directory site as the mailbox from which the message was retrieved.

Note - Outlook by Phone requires interaction with the Client Access server and with the Mailbox server through the Unified Messaging server.
 

Also, remember the type of connections which server roles makes with each other while processing certain requests.Its really helpfull while troubleshooting the issue, if we are sure about which type of protocol is used.

Mail Flow in Exchange 2003 server (Draft Version)

Lets assume a Mail is send by a user to a recipient.

As soon as an Outlook users sends an email, the Microsoft Exchange Mail Submission service takes over.

Store driver service which continuesly checks if there is any Item in Outbox folder.

Once any items is found Store Driver uses MAPI connections to connect to the user's Outbox folder and then retrieves the it from the corresponding Mailbox server.

Then the same message is converted into some Summary-Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (S/TNEF). This format has no plain text part, and is in eight–bit binary format.

Next, the store driver places this email into the Submission Queue and moves the message from the user’s ‘Outbox’ to their ‘Sent Items’ folder.

Once the Email has reached the Submission queue, the Message Catogorizer process MailMsg object and splits it into MIME or RTF as necessary.

All conditions, Limits and Compliances are managed and checked here.

It also get catogorized whether this email belong to a Remote Destination or to an Internal network and accordingly it placed in the destination Domain of (AQE) Advance Queue Engine.

Now as per the Routing Information available with Email, its been forwarded to (AQE) Advance Queue Engine by the Routing Groups.

Here Advance Queue Engine Places this Email address to the Exchange Routing Engine which are managed by Routing Master of each Routing Group which will determining the best path for message delivery. Routing Master determine best path for an Email analysing Link Status and Cost.

Lastly SMTP creates a SMTP session with remote SMTP host. Once the connection is establised..

INFORMATION STORE retrieves the Email and convert it as required.

Now if Email is for Internal - SMTP will be used for Intra Server Message Delivery for several components like Message Journaling and Message categorization. Exchange Servers in the same Routing Group use SMTP to communicate with each other.

If its a Internet Email Delivery - SMTP is oftenly used to deliver e-mail to other exchange organizations or other messaging systems. Exchange Server 2003 can use the Virtual SMTP Server, Exchange SMTP Connectors or Routing Group Connectors to deliver messages.
 

Outlook Commandline Switches

Switch	Description
/a	Creates an item with the specified file as an attachment. Example: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe" /a "C:\My Documents\labels.doc" If no item type is specified, IPM.Note is assumed. Cannot be used with message classes that aren't based on Outlook.
/altvba otmfilename	Opens the VBA program specified in otmfilename, rather than %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\VbaProject.OTM.
/autorun macroname	Opens Outlook and immediately runs the macro specified in macroname.
/c messageclass	Creates a new item of the specified message class (Outlook forms or any other valid MAPI form). Examples: /c ipm.activity creates a Journal entry /c ipm.appointment creates an appointment /c ipm.contact creates a contact /c ipm.note creates an e-mail message /c ipm.stickynote creates a note /c ipm.task creates a task
/checkclient	Prompts for the default manager of e-mail, news, and contacts.
/cleanclientrules	Starts Outlook and deletes client-based rules.
/cleandmrecords	Deletes the logging records saved when a manager or a delegate declines a meeting.
/cleanfinders	Removes Search Folders from the Microsoft Exchange server store.
/cleanfreebusy	Clears and regenerates free/busy information. This switch can only be used when you are able to connect to your Microsoft Exchange server.
/cleanprofile	Removes invalid profile keys and recreates default registry keys where applicable.
/cleanpst	Launches Outlook with a clean Personal Folders file (.pst) (Personal Folders file (.pst): Data file that stores your messages and other items on your computer. You can assign a .pst file to be the default delivery location for e-mail messages. You can use a .pst to organize and back up items for safekeeping.).
/cleanreminders	Clears and regenerates reminders.
/cleanrules	Starts Outlook and deletes client- and server-based rules.
/cleanschedplus	Deletes all Schedule+ data (free/busy, permissions, and .cal file) from the server and enables the free/busy information from the Outlook Calendar to be used and viewed by all Schedule+ 1.0 users.
/cleanserverrules	Starts Outlook and deletes server-based rules.
/cleansniff	Deletes duplicate reminder messages.
/cleansubscriptions	Deletes the subscription messages and properties for subscription features.
/cleanviews	Restores default views. All custom views you created are lost.
/designer	Starts Outlook without figuring out if Outlook should be the default client in the first run.
/embedding	Opens the specified message file (.msg) as an OLE embedding. Also used without command-line parameters for standard OLE co-create.
/explorer	Opens the new window in "explorer" mode (link bar on).
/f msgfilename	Opens the specified message file (.msg) or Microsoft Office saved search (.oss).
/firstrun	Starts Outlook as if it were run for the first time.
/folder	Opens a new window in "folder" mode (Navigation Pane off).
/hol holfilename	Opens the specified .hol file.
/ical icsfilename	Opens the specified .ics file.
/importprf prffilename	Launches Outlook and opens/imports the defined MAPI profile (*.prf). If Outlook is already open, queues the profile to be imported on the next clean launch.
/l olkfilename	Opens the specified .olk file.
/launchtraininghelp assetid	Opens a Help window with the Help topic specified in assetid.
/m emailname	Provides a way for the user to add an e-mail name to the item. Only works in conjunction with the /c command-line parameter. Example: Outlook.exe /c ipm.note /m emailname
/nocustomize	Starts Outlook without loading outcmd.dat (customized toolbars) and *.fav file.
/noextensions	Starts Outlook with extensions turned off, but listed in the Add-In Manager.
/nopollmail	Starts Outlook without checking mail at startup.
/nopreview	Starts Outlook with the Reading Pane off and removes the option from the View menu.
/p msgfilename	Prints the specified message (.msg). Does not work with HTML.
/profile profilename	Loads the specified profile. If your profile name contains a space, enclose the profile name in quotation marks (").
/profiles	Opens the Choose Profile dialog box regardless of the Options setting on the Tools menu.
/recycle	Starts Outlook using an existing Outlook window, if one exists. Used in combination with /explorer or /folder.
/resetfoldernames	Resets default folder names (such as Inbox or Sent Items) to default names in the current Office user interface language. For example, if you first connect to your mailbox Outlook using a Russian user interface, the Russian default folder names cannot be renamed. To change the default folder names to another language such as Japanese or English, you can use this switch to reset the default folder names after changing the user interface language or installing a different language version of Outlook.
/resetfolders	Restores missing folders for the default delivery location.
/resetnavpane	Clears and regenerates the Navigation Pane for the current profile.
/rpcdiag	Opens Outlook and displays the remote procedure call (RPC) connection status dialog.
/s filename	Loads the specified shortcuts file (.fav).
/safe	Starts Outlook without extensions, Reading Pane, or toolbar customization.
/safe:1	Starts Outlook with the Reading Pane off.
/safe:2	Starts Outlook without checking mail at startup.
/safe:3	Starts Outlook with extensions turned off, but listed in the Add-In Manager.
/safe:4	Starts Outlook without loading Outcmd.dat (customized toolbars) and *.fav file.
/select foldername	Starts Outlook and opens the specified folder in a new window. For example, to open Outlook and display the default calendar use: "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe" /select outlook:calendar
/sniff	Starts Outlook and forces a detection of new meeting requests in the Inbox, and then adds them to the calendar.
/t oftfilename	Opens the specified .oft file.
/v vcffilename	Opens the specified .vcf file.
/vcal vcsfilename	Opens the specified .vcs file.
/x xnkfilename	Opens the specified .xnk file.

Exchange 2007 Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) - Draft Version

Implementation CCR for Exchange 2007

Parts of the Documentation:

• Introduction to the Lab Setup
• Brief on installation of Domain Controller
• Installing HUB/CAS/UM role prior to Clustered Mailbox implementation
• Creating Majority Node Set(MNS Quorum, File Share witness) and setting up the permissions
• Installation and configuration of both the node on Cluster server
• Installation of Mailbox server role on both the nodes.
• Creating Multiple/Bulk Exchange users from Script.

  Introduction of my Lab Setup for Exchange CCR Setup:

IIS COM+ and WWW services are also prerequisites of exchange 2007, we dont need them for every server role.
Installation of Domain Controller

Install 2K8 SP2.

Run “DCPROMO”

Setup DNS for the domain

Once our Dcpromo wizard is complete, restart the domain controller.

Install Win2K3 SP2 on other two nodes and add them as member servers Node1 and Node2.
Friends here we are going to install Exchange 2007 on Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR). So once we have decided that we want to implement CCR for our Exchange Organization we must install other roles prior to Mailbox role in our domain. So I am going to start steps by step installation of CCR from scratch.
Installing HUB/CAS/UM role prior to Clustered Mailbox implementation

It’s important that we have HUB\CAS roles in-place in our domain before we start installing Mailbox role on cluster nodes.
So let’s start with the installation of HUB\CAS\UM server roles.
We need to install our server for Exchange 2007 with prerequisites mentioned above.

Create one login with Domain Admin, Enterprise Admin and Schema Admin permissions.

We need these permissions to prepare schema and AD Preperation.
As you will proceed you will see I have tried to capture every possible move in screenshots. So there is very less left for write-up. Particularly, if you are looking for a step-by-step process. Here are the steps you need to follow.
Please run these commands from command prompt as shown below:

After complition of Ad preperation, we can start with the installation of our first Exchange server.
If you have sucessfully installed all prerequisites you will see all 3 steps will grey out.

Don't worry if you are not sure, once you will start the installation it will run a prerequisites test for you, So just click on Step4 of the wizard to start installation of exchange 2007.

Click next on the introduction screen to move ahead.

 Click I Agree to accept terms and conditions.

 Click Yes for reporting, it will help you in some system failure for known solutions from Microsoft.

We need to customize our selection as we are going to install only CAS/HUB and UM server roles.

 Click to server roles which we need to install, in our case will select CAS/HUB and UM.

 Once we see setup has completed with no errors, click Finish and update the server before you reboot.

Once its rebooted our CAS/HUB and UM server is ready. Now we need to step ahead to configure our Mailbox role on CCR Cluster. but before we do that we must take care of "MNS" & Quorum.

Setting up "Majority Node Set" (MNS) Folder with correct permission on HUB Transport.
This Folder will act as an additional vote to the cluster as its not on any of the nodes from Cluster, to determine the status of the cluster in a 2Node MNS quorum cluster deployment. Its necessary in order to make use of the CCR functionality in Exchange Server 2007.
Therefore we will create a folder on HUB Transport server and also set permission for Cluster admin account. Before we start with the installation of Mailbox server role, we need to configure cluster services on both nodes. We must configure cluster nodes before we install exchange server roles on it.





Configuration of CCR.. (Node1)
Initiate Cluster Administrator Wizard.

We will select Create New Cluster here

Click Next to startup with New Server Cluster Wizard.

Our Domain name should pop-up automatically if not its fine we can just select from dropdown menu under Domain. Also we will assign a name to this cluster which we are building up.

Add 1st node on which we are going to install Clustering services.

Click next and dont worry about these 2 warning, we can ignore them.

Assign one new IP for Cluster Managment service. (This IP will be different from both the nodes.)

Assign a dedicated Cluster Service Account with Domain Admin rights which can manage our Cluster.

Click on Quorum to configure Majority Node Set

Select Majority Node Set from Dropdown list.

Click next which once get complete we will be at final screen of our Node1 Cluster configuration.

Click Finish and we succssfully created our Cluster server.

Now we can open Cluster Administrator either from Administrative tools or CluAdmin from Run command.

Here we can see we are ready with our Cluster Server but with no fault tolerance, and to do so we need to add another node i.e. Node2 to our cluster server.

Adding Node2 to our Cluster:

Right click on 1st Node and selec Node to add second node to our cluster.

Browse for Computer name and select second node.

 

Click add to add CCRNode2 into selected computers of our cluster and click Next.

 We have to provide Cluster credential so that we can add more nodes to any running Cluster.

 Review the summary of our selection and if everything is as per our expectation click Next.

 Click next to reach final screen.

 Click Finish to finish the wizard.

 We can start Cluster Administrator to verify our 2 Nodes in cluster for fault taulerance.

Once we are done with the Node configuration, testing of failovers from first node to second. 

We are ready to install mailbox server role on both the nodes.

Installation of Mailbox server role:

(Active/Passive)

Installation procedure for Active node and for the passive node is almost similiar, its just that we have to select Active Clustered Mailbox Rule on the first one and Passive Clustered Mailbox role on the second one.

Lets begin with Active node first. Installation is almost similar till 4 to 5 screens in the wizard.

Just walk through from these options as we did earlier.

Here on the Active node will select "Active Clustered Mailbox role"

Same window will apear when will install Passive node, here we have to select the Passive Clustered Maibox Role.

 
Select the option Cluster Continuous Replication and assign a new IP for your Mailbox server.
(This IP should be different then other mailbox roles you have implemented)

And we have completed the installation of Mailbox server role on the Active Node Cluster.

Reboot you mailbox server alternately to check the functionality of your Cluster.

Lets Create Multiple/Bulk users from powershell command using script and csv file.

Open Powershell console
Enter this command: .\CreateUsersFromCSV.ps1 this will ask us to browse to the location where we have kept out CSV file. just navigate to the folder, select the csv file and click open.
As soon as we will clicopen it will start creating users and within a min or so more than 300 Lab users will be created under a New OU called "Exchange Users"


Here we are done with the Implementation of CCR on Exchange 2007 in a Test Environment.