While the new offline address book (OAB) created in an earlier lesson was distributed through public folders, the default offline address book is setup a little differently. The reason is because we indicated during the installation process we only had Outlook 2007 clients. Doing this means that the default offline address book will be distributed through the Internet Information Services (IIS). To verify that, you can click on the “Distribution” tab where you will find “Enable Web-based distribution” option enabled with its corresponding virtual directory listed.

Should you want to enable secure sockets layer (SSL) for greater security, you will need to do that from the IIS manager. Click on the Windows Start menu, go to “Administrative Tools” and click on the “Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager” link there. This will bring up the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager where you can proceed to look for the OAB under the “Default Web site” node.

Select the OAB entry, and scroll down to look for the “SSL Settings” option at the bottom. Clicking on it will bring up a dialog with a “Require SSL” option, which also comes with the option to opt for 128-bit SSL. It is possible also to ignore, accept or require client certificates. When done, click on “Apply” to save the settings.

With the new Exchange 2013 architecture moving away from the use of a Hub Transport server and only going with a Client Access server for front end transport and a Mailbox server some are confused regarding how mail flows.

The Microsoft Exchange Team says the mail flow process occurs through the “transport pipeline” which is made up of three services.  These services aid in transport on our Client Access and Mailbox servers (which may exist on the same server).  The Client Access has the Front End Transport service while the Mailbox server has the Hub Transport service and Mailbox Transport service (which is made up of two services).

The Front End Transport service on the Client Access server handles the flow of mail from the Mailbox server (specifically the Hub Transport service on the Mailbox server side) to the outside world.  The Hub Transport service (or just Transport service) handles routing from the Front End Transport service to the Mailbox Transport service as well as between other servers within the organization internally.  The Mailbox Transport service handles mail transport between the Hub Transport service and the mailbox database.

Going back to the Front End Transport service it’s basically a stateless proxy for inbound and outbound traffic with no traffic being queued as a result of that service, however, as mentioned, it can be used to filter traffic.  That filtering can be based upon connections, domains, senders and recipients.  It does inspect message content however.  Inspection of the content itself can be done by the Transport service as it handle SMTP mail flow from the Front End Transport service to the Mailbox Transport service and into the database.

Note: One important point regarding the Front End Transport service is that mail inbound and outbound to the Internet through an Edge server will bypass this service.  The Edge will communicate directly with the Transport service on the Mailbox server.

The two services that make up the Mailbox Transport service include the Mailbox Transport Submission service and the Mailbox Transport Delivery service.  The Delivery side accepts messages from the Transport service and delivers them using RPC to the mailbox database.  And the Submission service receives, through RPC, messages from the local mailbox database and passes it to the Transport service.

If a graphical representation will help make all of this come to life here is an artists rendition of the process.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996349.aspx

The generation server mentioned in the creation of a new offline address book is used to handle the creation and update process of the off-line address book. This happens before they are placed on the share.

To move the offline address book generation server, click on the “Mailbox” node within the Organization Configuration Work center and select the off-line address book to alter from the “Offline Address Book” tab. From there, click on the “Move…” option that appears under the Actions panel, which will launch the “Move Offline Address Book” wizard. Another option, “Set as Default” is used in the event that changing the default offline address book is desired – though not something that you would do often.

An administrator can also select “Properties” in order to modify various offline address book properties such as the update schedule, options that were selected in the course of creating the offline address book, and the distribution method. In the event that existing Outlook clients have been upgraded to Outlook 2007, enabling “Web-based distribution” in the “Distribution” tab will provide the virtual directory where it can be distributed from. Doing so will make it possible to move off the public folder structure.

Users may not always be necessarily connected to the network all the time. In situations where there is no connectivity, having an offline address book can be helpful. To create an additional offline address book on top of the default offline address book, go to the Organization Configuration Workcenter, select “Mailbox,” and click on “New Offline Address Book…” on the Action panel.

This will initiate the “New Offline Address Book” wizard. Type in a name and select an “Offline address book generation server.” Next, the administrator will have to decide if they want to include the default Global Address List, or to select specific address lists instead to narrow down the available options.

Clicking on “Next” will see you being asked about whether to enable Web-based distribution. This is only for clients that are running Outlook 2007, and will require that the virtual directory that it is distributed from be selected. In deployment scenarios where there are Outlook clients that are 2003 Service Pack 1 or earlier, than select the “Enable public folder distribution” option instead.

Clicking on “Next” will bring up the Configuration Summary page, and clicking on “New” will see the new offline address book being created. You can now click on “Finish” to exit the wizard.

When performing an installation of Exchange 2013 some have noted that the Setup Progress steps at the end of the install process is different for each person.  This isn’t entirely accurate (there are patterns) but there are distinctions based upon the amount of effort spent preparing your organization ahead of time combined with the server roles you choose.

If you perform an installation of Exchange 2013 without running the Setup switches ahead of time then the Install Wizard will show you an extra step at the beginning for Organization Preparation.  This will be the case even if you have run some but not all of the prep switches.  During that part of the setup progress the remaining switches will be run to make sure your AD is ready.

Then, depending on the roles you choose (Mailbox or Client Access) you will be shown the remaining steps.  In the event you let the wizard handle the AD prep and install both roles you will be shown 15 steps:

• Step 1:  Organization Preparation
• Step 2:  Stopping Services
• Step 3:  Copy Exchange Files
• Step 4:  Language Files
• Step 5:  Restoring Services
• Step 6:  Languages
• Step 7:  Management Tools
• Step 8:  Mailbox role: Transport service
• Step 9:  Mailbox role: Client Access service
• Step 10: Mailbox role: Unified Messaging service
• Step 11: Mailbox role: Mailbox service
• Step 12: Client Access role: Front End Transport service
• Step 13: Client Access role: Client Access Front End service
• Step 14: Finalizing Setup
• Step 15: Setup has completed – click Finish

Another anomaly of the install process is the fact that during step 8 (the install of the Mailbox role: Transport service) the install progress bar seems to hang at 3% (see Figure 1) for a really long time and it might hang one or two more times after that.  Don’t stress out about the extra time it is hanging at 3% so long as it doesn’t return a failure.  If the install fails it will let you know and you can play detective through the Application event logs or through the ExchangeSetup.log (located at c:\ExchangeSetupLogs).  But if it is still showing you a progress bar than give it time.

Figure 1

Eventually the steps will complete and you’ll have a functioning server.  At this point you should reboot but if you are eager to see the new management tool called the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) you can have that open immediately after the install process.  (See Figure 2)

Figure 2