The environment

This article builds on the SharePoint Farm setup that I have documented here. It consists of the following servers which would form a common basis in most large organizations.

• Windows 2008 R2 server running Active Directory Domain Services
• Windows 2008 R2 server running SQL 2008 R2
• Windows 2008 R2 server running SharePoint 2010 RTM
• Windows 2008 R2 server running Exchange 2010 RTM
• Windows 7 client running Office 2010 RTM

SharePoint 2010 allows you to configure any SMTP service including the one which I had setup in my previous article to send outgoing email, however we will utilise Exchange 2010 (same instructions apply for Exchange 2007) to provide email delivery to our end users.  Instructions on configuring the SMTP service (i.e. you are not using Microsoft Exchange in your environment) can be found on TechNet.

Creating a Receive Connector in Exchange 2010

If you recall from my previous article when we were configuring incoming email, we created a “Send Connector” in Exchange to forward the messages to the SMTP service that we had configured and installed.  This time round we will create a “Receive Connector” in Exchange 2010.

Launch the Exchange Management Console and navigate to Server Configuration / Hub Transport / New Receive Connector.  The New Receive Connector wizard is invoked.

Enter a descriptive name and ensure “Custom” is selected as the intended use.

Click Next

Leave “All Available IPv4” in your Local Network settings unless you have specific Exchange IP requirements.

Click Next

Edit the IP address of your SharePoint 2010 server.

Click Next

Click New

You will now notice that our SharePoint 2010 Outgoing mail connector is listed with our default Exchange 2010 Receive Connectors.. 

We will now venture into its properties and make a minor permission change.  Click on the “Permission Groups” tab and select Anonymous users.

Click Apply.

Configuring outgoing email in SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

Launch Central Administration and navigate to System Settings / E-Mail and Test Messages / Configure outgoing e-mail settings.

Enter your Outbound SMTP server, i.e. your Exchange server where we created our receive connector and specify a From and Reply-to address.

Click OK

Testing our configuration

Lets navigate to our SharePoint 2010 web application and create an Alert .  In my example I will create an immediate alert for Announcements.

Navigate to your Announcement List and click on List Tools/List and then click on “Alert Me” located in the ribbon interface.

Select “Set alert on this list” and select your Alert options.  Ensure that you have “send notifications immediately” selected for testing purposes.

Click OK

You should receive your notification email that you have successfully subscribed soon after creating your alert.

I will now create a Test Announcement to ensure that the actual alert is delivered.

Alas! 5 minutes later (based on the immediate timer job definition schedule) we have received our email alert confirming that our SharePoint configuration with Exchange was successful.

Did you know that you can also configure outgoing email for a specific Web application?  You might want to do this if you have multiple SharePoint Web Applications hosting specific site collections and would want a different From and or Reply Address setup.

Even though we are now going to configure outgoing email for a specific Web application, you are still required to setup the default farm outgoing email settings as per the above.

Configuring outgoing email for a specific Web application in SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

Launch Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Web Applications.

Select one of your Web Applications and then select “General Settings” from the Ribbon.

Select “Outgoing E-Mail” from the drop down.

It will pick up your default farm settings that we entered in earlier in which you can now change the From and Reply-to address to something more specific for the selected Web application.

Click OK

We are done!  I hope you have found this step by step guide in configuring outgoing email in SharePoint 2010 with Exchange useful, and stay tuned as we continue our journey in configuring our SharePoint 2010 Farm.

Articles in this series

Installing SharePoint 2010 using Least Privilege Service Accounts – Step by Step Guide

Configuring incoming email in SharePoint 2010 with Exchange – Step by Step Guide

Configuring outgoing email in SharePoint 2010 with Exchange – Step by Step Guide

Exchange 2010 Beta, First Look, Installation – Part 1
Exchange 2010 Beta, Configuration – Part 2
Exchange 2010 Beta, So what’s new – Part 3

Further to the above links, I will briefly outline some of the new changes that come with Exchange 2010 which I will further expand on in future posts.

• Say good bye to Cluster continuous replication (CCR), Local continuous replication (LCR), Standby continuous replication (SCR) and say hello to Database Availability Group (DAG).  DAG is the best of CCR and SCR technologies allowing you to create a collection of up 16 Exchange Servers, each of which can contain a replica of a mailbox database.  DAG not only simplifies clustering matters but provides much greater resiliency over the traditional 2 node CCR cluster.
• Enhanced Outlook Web App (OWA), formerly known as Outlook Web Access (OWA) provides you with a much closer experience to Microsoft Outlook more than any other previous version .  The most welcomed enhancement of Outlook Web App would also have to be the ability to run the “premium” client on Internet Browsers other than Internet Explorer.  You can now run premium OWA on Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari, a welcome inclusion for Linux and Mac users. Here is a link to some screen captures.
• Exchange Server 2010 introduces the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) and Role Based Access Control (RBC).  This is a welcome addition in particular to larger organisations providing them with the ability to associate permissions against various roles which are further mapped to various Exchange tasks such as adding mailboxes etc.  The ECP console empowers these users to perform Exchange tasks delegated to them using a friendly interface.
• Enhancements to Exchange Unified Communications roles such as Voicemail Preview, allowing you to receive a text version of your voicemail messages, WOW!
• Exchange 2010 provides 70% less disk I/O over Exchange 2007 which had a 70% less disk I/O over Exchange 2003.  With these figures, Microsoft are comfortable in stating that Exchange 2010 will work with cheaper disks such as Direct Attached Storage (DAS) versus the notably more expensive Storage Area Network (SAN).  This brings huge savings to organisations looking at deploying Exchange 2010.
• Exchange 2010 introduces end user archiving providing each user with a special personal mailbox that is linked to the user’s primary mailbox.  While it may not compete with solutions such as Symantec Vault or Quest Archive Manager, it is a welcome addition for smaller markets who would like to be compliant and enforce mailbox retention.  A new feature labelled Legal Hold, provides administrators with the ability to capture users deleted and edited messages, appointments and tasks from their mailbox and personal archives.
• Exchange 2010 also provides enhancements to Exchange ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Devices.  These include but are not limited to conversation view and SMS Sync.  More information on Exchange 2010 mobility can be found here.

The above is by no means a complete definitive list and you can access a more comprehensive list of What’s New in Exchange 2010 from the Microsoft TechNet site here. I have also appended this article with a list of Resources around Exchange 2010.

Are you just as excited as I am, and how soon will you be deploying, transitioning or maybe even migrating to this new and exciting platform.

Don’t forget to subscribe via RSS in order to be notified of future articles around Exchange Server 2010.

Resources:

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Home Page;
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx

Exchange Server TechCenter;
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/exchange/2010/default.aspx

The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog
http://msexchangeteam.com/

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 120 Day Trial;
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=05741f65-2a7b-4070-879f-d74208d6171d&displaylang=en

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 RC VHD;
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53f7382a-3664-4de3-8303-31e514d69f02&displaylang=en

Top 10 reasons to try Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/why-upgrade.aspx

Okay, so let’s begin with everyone’s favourite, Outlook Web Access (OWA) and focus on some of it’s new features.   OWA has come along way since the days I first used it as an end user in Exchange 5.5.  From the outset you will notice that Exchange 2010 OWA adopts the Windows Live theme, see below screenshots, and by default displays your messages in conversation view.  The OWA premium client experience can now be accessed from Firefox and Safari and not limited to Internet Explorer, a welcome by all who don’t necessarily run Internet Explorer as their primary browser or don’t run a PC for that matter and because I run OS X at home it was the first enhancement I tried out.  Check out the screen shots below of OWA premium running through Firefox.  Some of the notable features and enhancements of OWA in 2010 are captured in the below screenshots.

Outlook Web Access Features

OWA Premium running on Mozilla Firefox.

Messages are arranged by conversation view by default.

You now have the ability to view Calendars side by side just like you can in Outlook 2007.

Here’s another enhancement with OWA displaying user’s mailbox usage and quota limit imposed.

Also a nice touch is the ability to open up other user’s mailboxes and have them displayed in the same window as your own.

Other notable enhancements with regards to OWA are listed in the following TechNet article and include;

• *Favourites in the Navigation Pane
  *Search folders
  *Message filtering
  *The ability to set categories in the message list
  *Options in the Web management interface for Outlook Web Access
  *The ability to attach messages to messages
  *Expanded right-click capabilities
  *Integration with Office Communicator, including presence, chat, and a contact list
  *The ability to send and receive text (SMS) messages from Outlook Web Access

The trend with OWA throughout the years is to try and get closer and closer to its fully fledged desktop client Microsoft Outlook, and with the advances of web technology over recent years the gap is closing with each new version released and Exchange 2010’s OWA offering is no exception.

Next on the list of changes are the enhancements made to the Exchange 2010 Management Console (EMC).  Some of these are listed as follows.

Organisational Health Tab

This tab provides you with a quick view of how Exchange is operating in your environment.  We touched upon this in the first article of this series and can be located by clicking on the Microsoft Exchange On-Premises node and running the Gather Organizational Information utility under Actions.  Upon completion you will be provided with the below summary screen;

Community and Feedback Tab

The Community and Feedback tab provides links to Exchange-related topics on Microsoft TechNet and new postings from the Exchange team blogs.

Exchange Help Client (EHC) and PowerShell

This small enhancement provides you with help information directly from TechNet by clicking F1.  A PowerShell command log also records the PowerShell command when you perform a task through the EMC.  A Property dialog box command exposure is also a new feature that displays PowerShell commands including parameters when changing properties of an object.

Role Based Access Control and Exchange Control Panel

For large Exchange Organisations with multiple messaging administrators, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and  Exchange Control Panel (ECP) are a welcome addition to Exchange 2010.   RBAC allows you to associate permissions against various roles which is also mapped to various tasks in Exchange such as adding mailboxes etc. The ECP console is an administrative web based  tool for delegated administrators such as department administrators and help desk personnel. The ECP console enables these administrators to perform tasks that are delegated to them. These tasks include creating and managing users and groups, defining Unified Messaging and retention policies, changing passwords, and modifying encryption settings.  You can access ECP by browsing to the following URL https://server/ecp and is part of the Client Access role.

With the latest Exchange 2010 Management Architecture, you can now use a single machine and management console to manage multiple 2010 organisations both online and on premises.

Exchange 2010 Storage Architecture

Microsoft continues to improve Exchange’s performance marketing it as an enterprise messaging solution that can easily scale out.  Exchange 2007 went a long way in providing us with enterprise scalability with the introduction of 64 bit only computing breaking the 4GB memory barrier and lowering disk I/O by increasing the page size from 4KB to 8KB.  It also introduced Exchange roles (Hub/Mailbox/CAS/Unified Messaging and Edge) all which could run on separate machines with multiple instances for redundancy and load balancing depending on the role.  So how has Exchange 2010 improved on what Exchange 2007 has to offer?  Below are some of the notable enhancements with regards to Exchange 2010 architecture;

• *Increased page size from 8KB to 32KB
  *The Store compresses attachments
  *Header data for all mailbox items is stored in a single database table making it more efficient
  *The Store updates Outlook Client views (indexes) only when they’re accessed reducing constant background processing

The other notable change with regards to Exchange’s architecture is the removal of storage groups!? What do you mean? No more storage groups? Yep!  and without going into too much detail, below are some of the changes around Exchange 2010, storage and clustering.

• *The concept of storage groups is eliminated
  * Single copy clusters and Local Continuous Replication are eliminated and not supported in Exchange 2010
  * Exchange 2010 introduces Database Availability Groups (DAGs), which are groupings of up to 16 servers in which some or all of the databases are marked for replication to one or more other servers.

More detailed technical information can be found in the following TechNet article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335211%28EXCHG.140%29.aspx.

As you can see there are a plethora of changes and enhancements to Exchange 2010, bringing some valuable functionality to any organisation who chooses to adopt it.  Exchange 2010 improves on Exchange 2007 when it comes to  providing  resiliency, cheaper storage solutions, high availability, improvement in mailbox sizes and increase in performance which will assist any organisation in reducing cost, a welcome in these tough economic times.

Finally, TechNet has some great pre-release documentation that outlines What’s new which can be accessed from here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298136(EXCHG.140).aspx).

Microsoft is also providing a free one year subscription to a number of Exchange 2010 clinics that is invaluable to any Messaging Administrator who wants to learn more about the upcoming release.  You can access these from the Microsoft eLearning Site.  https://www.microsoftelearning.com.

Hope you have enjoyed the 3 part series introducing Exchange 2010.  So what are you waiting for?  Get your hands on the beta which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Site and happy testing!  http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=1898ED2C-2F88-48AC-824E-D3D20FAD77D7&displaylang=en

You will notice when you launch Exchange Management Console that  Exchange 2010 has an organizational summary screen which will need to get refreshed when changes are made. To do so, Right Click on Microsoft Exchange On-Premises and select “Gather Organizational Information”, this will go ahead and run a couple of scripts and then provide you with an updated summary screen.

The quickest method in verifying a successful install (apart from checking the installation logs) is to navigate to the various nodes and ensure that your Mailbox Database is mounted, your OWA site is setup (navigate to the site via /OWA”>https://<servername>/OWA) and finally check your Hub Transport Server configuration.  You should notice that the Client and Default Receive connectors have been setup by default.

(Default Mailbox Database in a “Mounted” Status)

(Default OWA Web Site)

(Hub Transport Server Configuration with client and default receive connectors)

Let’s now proceed by creating a second Active Directory Account so we can test mail flow between two user accounts (note that the Administrator user has already been created).  To do so, you can create the Active Directory account first in Active Directory Users and Computers and then run the “New Mailbox” wizard or you could create the Active Directory User and Mailbox in the one step using the same “New Mailbox” Wizard.  The “New Mailbox” Wizard is located under Recipient Configuration / Mailbox.

Upon completing the wizard you will be presented with 2 users listed under Recipient Configuration / Mailbox.

Login using your newly created User Account and Mailbox through OWA and send a test message to the administrator account and CC yourself (this will test the Hub Transport internal routing)

Okay! We have now confirmed that internal traffic is being routed successfully, now for external.  We need to ensure that we have setup our External Domain as an Accepted Domain.  To do so, navigate to the “Organization Configuration / Hub Transport node and click on the Accepted Domains Tab.  Run the New Accepted Domain Wizard under Actions.

Your Exchange Server is now authoritative for that domain and you should now be able to receive external emails to that domain.

Let’s now setup an Email Address Policy for our external domain.  Note that a Default Policy is already setup for your internal domain.

Under Organization Configuration / Hub Transport / Email Address Policies Tab, click on New E-Mail Address Policy under Actions.

Click Next and specify any conditions, in my case I left the default for all recipient types, click Next, then select Add SMTP, and fill out your Email address naming convention and the specified accepted domain we just created earlier.

Click Next to apply the policy immediately, and then click New.

Our newly created Email Address Policy is now listed with a higher priority.

We are now making some good progress and should soon be able to send email to the outside world.  Because we have not setup an Edge Server to handle smtp routing externally, we will need to manually setup a send connector to send directly to the Internet.  Obviously this isn’t best practice and one should always setup a separate Edge Server with its notable advantages such as dedicated messaging hygiene especially when run in conjunction with a compatible Virus Scanning API (VSAPI) such as Forefront for Exchange, but for our dev environment this will suffice.  In order to setup a send connector, navigate to, Organization configuration / Hub Transport / Send Connectors and click on New Send Connector under Actions.  Type in a Name and select Internet as the intended use for this send connector and then click Next.

Specify your address space, Select Add SMTP Address Space and type * to be able to send to all external domains.

Select your preferred Network Settings, Click Next.

Your source server should then automatically populate, click Next.

That’s it, you should now be able to send to external remote domains.  Now I mentioned earlier that we were not going to setup an Edge Role in our dev environment but having said that we can still utilise the Anti-Spam functionality on our multi-role virtual machine, specifically on the Hub Transport Server Role.  TechNet has a great article on enabling this functionality and can be found here.  In summary, the process is as follows;

Launch the Exchange Management Shell and browse to where the Install-AntispamAgents.ps1 is located which by default is under

%system drive%/Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v14\Scripts folder

Type the following command ./install-AntispamAgents.ps1

After the command has successfully run you will need to restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service by running the following command;

Restart-Service MSExchangeTransport

You will now notice that there is an Anti-spam tab located under Organization Configuration / Hub Transport with the Anti-spam features listed and enabled.

Well, that’s all that is to it.  Basic configuration for an Exchange 2010 server is pretty much identical to Exchange 2007 which is great for Messaging Administrators who have already adopted Exchange 2007.  The last article in this series will outline some of the new Exchange 2010 features with nice pretty pictures outlining these, so stay tuned.

So here it is, I have documented below a step by step installation guide with links to TechNet articles for reference.  This will be a 3 part series with part 1 focusing on meeting the prerequisites for an Exchange 2010 Beta installation and going through the process in its entirety step by step.  Part 2 will focus on some basic Exchange configuration to get your environment up and running and we’ll finish off with investigating and discussing some of the latest features on offer.

My dev environment for simplicity consists of a single Virtual Machine running Windows 2008 Enterprise Server with Active Directory and DNS configured in a single forest/domain setup.  This will also be the same server that we will install Exchange 2010 Beta on, definitely not best practice but sufficient for the purpose of this article.

History tells us that since the introduction of Active Directory we have always been required to prepare  Active Directory and update the necessary schema.  Exchange 2010 Beta is no different and TechNet has a great article on that which you can access here explaining the process. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125224(EXCHG.140).aspx

Word of warning, Microsoft highly advises against installing Exchange 2010 in an existing production domain being still in Beta and is not supported with this build, purely due to the fact that schema changes will be made to Active Directory and may be destructive and irreversible.

The first command you need to run is setup /p or setup /PrepareAD

Second command is setup /pad or setup /PrepareAllDomains (I only had one domain in this forest)

Now that we have Active Directory at the right schema level, we can now begin with the Exchange 2010 installation.  Run the downloaded executable and extract the installation files and then run setup.exe to launch the wizard.

Run Step 1. Install .NET Framework 3.5.  This will open a link in Internet Explorer (or your preferred default browser) to the Microsoft Download Center.

Run Step 2. Install Windows Remote Management 2.0.  Again, this will open a link in Internet Explorer, this time directing you to the Microsoft Connect Site.  This is still in Community Technology Preview 3 (CTP3) and uses the Microsoft File Transfer Manager to download the file so please ensure you have Active X enabled.  This installation may request a reboot once complete.

Run Step 3. Install Windows PowerShell v2.  Again, this link will direct you to the Microsoft Download Center.

We are now ready to install Exchange and you will notice the first 3 steps are now dimmed, i.e. they have successfully been installed.

You will then receive the Language Pack confirmation screen advising that all subsequent screens will be in English.  Click Next.

Accept the License Agreement screen, click Next

The Error Reporting Screen then appears.  Let’s help the guys at Microsoft and click yes.

The installation type screen appears and because I want to install the Unified Messaging Role as well I will select the custom Exchange Server Installation, remember you cannot install the Edge Transport Role on the same box as the other Exchange Roles, this restriction has not changed since Exchange 2007.

Select your roles. You will notice as soon as you select one of the top roles that the Edge Transport Server role becomes dimmed and vice versa.

Specify the Exchange Organization name.

Select your client settings option.  In my case I don’t use Public Folders (that’s why we have SharePoint right?) and don’t run earlier Outlook or MAC OS X Entourage clients.

The next screen is a first for me, I have not seen this before with any Microsoft installation wizard specifically the part where you can choose the industry that best represents your organization.   Select your industry and again, let’s help the guys at Microsoft and click Join the Exchange Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Like Exchange 2007, the wizard then performs a readiness check for the different roles that you have selected.

In my instance, I failed miserably, so I followed the instructions outlined in order to get myself up to scratch and downloaded the necessary missing components and hot fixes!

They were notably;

• KB951725
• KB950888
• IIS via Server Manager (always seem to miss that one)
• 2007 Office System Converter Microsoft Filter Pack (This download will install and register iFilters with the Windows Indexing Service)
• Windows Media Encoder Desktop Experience Component (Unified Messaging Role)

Later I found the complete pre-requisites from the Microsoft TechNet Site READ THIS FIRST!http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(EXCHG.140).aspx

Once you have ensured all prerequisites are met, restart your server and re-run the installation.  Hopefully this time round your readiness checks succeeds for all items. Click Next.

The Installation will now continue, so take a seat back, make a coffee as this may take a while, in my case approximately 20 minutes.

The new Exchange Management Console launches upon completion and you will notice that there are similarities with Exchange 2007, notably the Nodes on the left hand side haven’t changed that much with configuration options segregated between Organization, Server and Recipient just as it was laid out in Exchange 2007 however you will notice some new tabs within these nodes.  Note that Exchange 2010 is the first version of Exchange that provides both an in house “On Premises” solution and a hosted cloud “On-Line” solution for customers who don’t want to manage and maintain an in house messaging system.

Let’s now just verify that our installation has completed successfully.  If you did receive an error during installation you can locate the Exchange Setup Logs via this TechNet article.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125254(EXCHG.140).aspx

I would quickly skim through the various nodes and ensure your Mailbox Database is mounted.  This usually indicates that most things are in order.

Well, that’s it for now but stay tuned for Part II where we will dive into some of the configuration options in getting a basic Exchange environment up and running with mail flow.