Accompanying the many new features
of Exchange Server 2013 is an updated set of administrative tools.
These updated administrative tools provide Exchange administrators the
capability to manage on-premises, online, or hybrid Exchange
environments from a single administrative console, as well as from the
command line.
1. Exchange Administration Center
One
of the most noticeable changes to Exchange Server 2013 administration
is the new Exchange Administration Center or EAC. In Exchange Server
2013, the Exchange Administration Center is a web-based management
console that replaces the Exchange Management Console (EMC) by
extending the Exchange Control Panel (ECP).
1.1 Features of the Exchange Administration Center
Some of the key features of the Exchange Administration Center include the following:
• List view—The
List view in EAC offers a number of improvements over the earlier ECP
tool. EAC provides the ability to display approximately 20,000 objects,
which is a substantial increase from the ECP‘s limit of 500 objects.
The EAC List view feature also adds a paging capability with a
configurable page size, and allows results to be exported to a
comma-separated value (CSV) file.
• Column selection in the Recipient list view—The Recipient list view allows the user to select only the desired columns and save these customized list views for future use.
• Control external access to EAC administrative features—The
Exchange Administration Center gives administrators the ability to
limit access to the Exchange Server 2013 management features.
Administrators can allow or deny access to EAC from Internet or
intranet locations while still allowing access to Outlook Web App
configuration settings.
• Manage public folders—Exchange
Server 2013 consolidates the Public Folder administrative tool from
Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 into the Exchange
Administration Center. A separate tool is no longer required to manage
public folders.
• Notification viewer—The
Exchange Administration Center includes a Notification viewer that
provides a quick way to view the status of currently running processes
such as mailbox moves. In addition, the Notification viewer can be
configured to send an email message when a process completes.
1.2 Accessing the Exchange Administration Center
The Exchange Administration Center can be accessed through the default uniform resource locator (URL) https://<servername>/ecp.
However, this URL is customizable, so the URL path may be different for
your organization. To find the URL of the EAC virtual directory, open
the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) and run the following command:
Get-ECPVirtualDirectory | Format-List Server,InternalURL,ExternalURL
The output of this command will be similar to the following:
[PS]C:\> Get-ECPVirtualDirectory | Format-List Server,InternalURL,ExternalURL
Server : E15-CAS
InternalURL : https://mail.companyabc.com/ecp
ExternalURL : https://mail.companyabc.com/ecp
After running this command, open Internet Explorer and enter the value for the InternalURL
attribute in the navigation bar to access the Exchange Administration
Center. Enter a set of administrative credentials, as shown in Figure 1, and then click Sign In to continue.
Figure 1. Sign-in screen for Exchange Administration Center.
Note
A warning screen will appear if the
certificate that is used for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on
the Exchange Administration Center website is not trusted by Internet
Explorer. If a self-signed or internal certificate is used, the
certificate can be imported into the appropriate certificate category
within Internet Explorer to remove the warning. Alternatively, the EAC
website can be configured to use a third-party SSL certificate that can
be verified back to a trusted public certification authority.
