When updating your address list to reflect new criteria and conditions, be aware that these changes does not automatically update or apply the address list across your Exchange organization.

This lesson steps you through the editing of the previously created address list called “Our Address List.” Modify “User Two” from a “Team Leader” to a “Team Admin” and click on “Ok” to apply. Once done, there is an option to select “Do not apply” but instead click on “Next” to finish the editing. A quick check will show “User Two” being shown under the “Our Address List” address list.

To manually apply the changes to the address list, go to the Exchange Management Shell.” Select “Our Address List” and click on the “Apply…” option that appears on the Action Pane on the right. There, you will be presented with the option to apply the changes either “Immediately” or “At the following time.” Select the former in this case, and click “Next”.

Run a check again and you will see that the address list has been updated.

All the email, calendaring items, contacts, tasks and so forth need to be housed somewhere within Exchange.  In the end it all goes into a database and that database needs an engine to help manage it, processes to work with it and additional services to help with the replication of data.

Exchange uses the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) also known as JET Blue as its database engine and in the end the database is a single .edb file per database (shown in Figure 1).  Note: With Exchange 2013 you can have up to 50 mounted databases per Exchange server, which is significantly less than the 100 you could mount with Exchange 2010.

Figure 1:  The .edb file with transaction logs

For years folks have been wanting a change to SQL as its database but in the words of Exchange Team expert Ross Smith IV “SQL squeals like a pig where ESE is easy”. My guess is that he means that ESE still outperforms SQL with regard to the type of transactions Exchange requires.

Now in legacy versions of Exchange the information store was a single process (store.exe).  With Exchange 2013 the information store has been completely rewritten in C# and renamed the Managed Store.  This new store has two processes, the Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Service.exe and the Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Worker.exe process.  With each mounted database you have another Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Worker.exe process started up.  So, each mount-request will create a new worker process which exits when a database is successfully dismounted. This means that the process of one database does not necessarily impact another process/database when e.g. it hangs.

You can see the worker processes if you take a look at Task Manager on your Exchange server and have multiple databases mounted.  Note in Figure 2 that the Store.Service.exe is present and used to help with managing the Store.Worker.exe processes.

Figure 2:  Task Manager and the Store.Worker.exe process

This helps isolate single database issues without impacting other active databases running on the same server. Database failover and physical disk handling have been improved, reducing IOPS utilization by + 50% and now supporting disk capacity up to 8TB. ESE has also been enhanced with deeper checkpoint depth for both active and passive database copies.

Final Commentary

The new Managed Store is an important new aspect of Exchange 2013 because of the many benefits that we appreciate as a result of the hard work by the Store team.  The only negative result (that we may see adjusted by SP1 depending on how important it is in the queue) is with regard to the new 50 mounted databases per Exchange server.  Many of you reading this may feel like that isn’t a major concern in your environment and so you have nothing to worry about with migrating toward Exchange 2013.

To create an Address List, go to the Exchange Management Console and select “Mailbox” under the “Organization Configuration” Work Center. Clicking on the “Address Lists” tab will show the existing address lists. By default, this would be: All Contacts, All Groups, All Rooms, All Users, Default Global Address List and Public Folders.

To create a new address list, click on the “New Address List…” link on the right-hand side to initiate the New Address List wizard. Type in a name, and if so desired, assign it under an appropriate address list to create a nested address list. For this example, leave it as the root and select “All recipients types.” Clicking on “Next” will bring up the condition screen where filter conditions can be set.

Make use of “Custom Attribute 1” and configure it to find team leaders by typing in “TeamLeader.” Once set correctly, clicking on the “Preview” button will show “User Two” who is a team leader. As can be evidenced, adding this attribute to all team leaders will ensure that they would all be included within this particular address list. This makes it very easy for individuals to find the user that they’re looking for should they know their team leader.

Clicking on “Next” will let you schedule when the address list should be applied, followed by a summary of the new address list to be created. If everything checks out, click on “New” to create the new address list. One created, users can select these lists to quickly narrow down the choices, and is particularly useful in companies with large global address lists.

It’s important to make sure your Active Directory environment is prepared for the Exchange 2013 deployment you are planning.  Here are a few important points to remember before you deploy Exchange 2013 into either a fresh environment (one that has never had Exchange installed) or an existing Exchange environment.

For starters you need to make sure your AD forest/domain functional levels are at least Server 2003.  In addition, with every AD site you want to deploy Exchange into you need to make sure you have at least one Domain Controller and a Global Catalog server.  Note: Read-only Domain Controllers are not supported.  And then you need to prepare the schema (which is Active Directory’s structure for keeping track of various objects and attributes).  To prepare the schema you have to do this from within the same site as the AD schema master.  Obviously to accomplish all of this you will need to make sure you have the permissions necessary.

It’s possible to upgrade the schema, prepare Active Directory and prepare your domain(s) by running the installation wizard GUI.  However, there are times when your organizational policy or other factors may require you to perform these tasks prior to the installation.

To do this you need to run the following command-line switches:

• You can prepare the schema using the following:
  • Setup /PrepareSchema or Setup /ps
  • You can prepare the schema and Active Directory together using the following:
    • Setup /PrepareAD /OrganizationName:<Name of Organization>
    • You can prepare the domain(s) using the following:
      • Setup /PrepareDomain (prepares the local domain)
      • Setup /PrepareDomain:<FQDN of domain to prepare>
      • Setup /PrepareAllDomains

One important point to note is that you will need to use the /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms at the end of each of the commands

While you can break up the process by preparing the schema, then the AD, then each individual domain, a faster way to do this would be to run the /PrepareAD switch first and then the /PrepareAllDomains switch.  That takes care of all your AD prep work in only two switches.

Another important point to keep in mind is if you decide to perform some of the prep work but not all of it the wizard will note what you haven’t done and will pick up from that point.  So you can upgrade the schema only and let the wizard prep AD and the domains for you.

As an example, we performed a schema update on an AD environment but did not prepare AD or the domains.  As a result you can see in Figure 1 that the install wizard saw this and is letting us know that it is going to run the /PrepareAD command behind the scenes.

Figure 1:  The install wizard knows to what degree our AD is prepared for an Exchange 2013 install

To learn more about Preparing AD and Domains you can visit TechNet here:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125224.aspx

Address lists make it easier for your users to send e-mails because they don’t have to remember the e-mail address of every individual within the company, or the e-mail addresses for groups or distribution groups that are mail enabled. Users simply have to use the global address list in order to send an e-mail. This can be problematic however, as your global address list becomes filled with users, contacts and other resources.

The solution would be to work with address lists in such a way that they can create smaller address list that are more manageable for users. To see how this works, simply click on “New” to create a new e-mail message. From there, click on the Address List button, which will allow users to see the global address list. Clicking on “Show other address lists” will allow users to browse through all the other address lists for the organization, which includes all address lists, all contacts, all global address lists, all groups, all users and public folders.

This is the default way of breaking down the global address list into smaller chunks so that your users can find what they’re looking for faster. For administrators who may wish to create their own address list though, the next lesson will demonstrate how this can be done in order to assist your users in ordre to make things simpler for them.