Working with Exchange resources

Exchange resources consist of the disk space that you allocate to customer organizations for their mailbox store and to user accounts for their mailboxes. This topic describes the administrative tasks you perform in Delegated Administration Console that affect Exchange resources. Those tasks are: registering and unregistering Exchange resources, provisioning Exchange for an organization, and creating and deleting mailboxes. It also describes how to view information about Exchange resources, including the list of registered resources and the organizations to which they are assigned.

Microsoft Provisioning System uses Resource Manager to provide integrated resource management functionality.

For more information about Resource Manager, see Resource management.

Registering and unregistering Exchange resources

Before you can provision Exchange services for any organization, you must first register the Exchange resources with Resource Manager. You can do this by submitting a direct XML request, or by using Delegated Administration Console. Only domain administrators can register Exchange resources.

When you register Exchange resources you must specify a mailbox store to register, its location, and its size. You must also indicate whether the mailbox store is to be used for dedicated storage or shared storage. Dedicated storage means that only one organization uses the mailbox store. Shared storage means that more than one organization uses the mailbox store.

Important

For information about how to register Exchange resources, see "Register Exchange resources" in the installation documentation located in the root folder on the Microsoft Provisioning System product CD. For a single computer configuration, see install_single.htm. For a multi-computer configuration, see install_multi.htm.

You can only unregister an Exchange resource that has no consumers. This means that in order to unregister a mailbox store, you must first disable Exchange services for any organization using the mailbox store. When you unregister an Exchange resource, any mailboxes stored on the mailbox store are retained until they are purged using Exchange System Manager or a mailbox cleanup utility. Domain administrators and service provider administrators can unregister Exchange resources.

Provisioning Exchange for an organization

When you enable Exchange services for an organization, Microsoft Provisioning System automatically allocates disk space on the Exchange server for that organization's mailbox store. It also keeps track of how much disk space is used for each organization's mailboxes.

When you provision Exchange for an organization, you must specify the following:

Specify mailbox store size

This is the maximum disk space allowed for the organization's mailboxes.

Specify whether the organization's mailboxes are stored on a dedicated or shared mailbox store

If the organization's mailboxes are on a dedicated mailbox store, an entire mailbox store is allocated to the organization. If not, the organization's mailboxes can be stored on any available shared mailbox store.

If you are provisioning Exchange services as part of a service plan, the Exchange properties specified for the plan apply. For more information about plans and services, see Working with plans and services.

Creating and deleting mailboxes

When you create a mailbox for a user account, you specify the maximum mailbox size. In Resource Manager, this space is deducted from the available mailbox store space allocated to the organization in which the user account resides. When the mailbox size reaches the maximum size, the mailbox no longer accepts new messages. When you delete a mailbox for a user account, the disk space that had been allocated to the deleted mailbox becomes available in Resource Manager and will be used for other mailboxes within the organization. To free up the physical space used by the mailbox on the server hard disk, however, you must use Exchange System Manager or a mailbox cleanup utility to delete the mailbox.

For specific procedures on creating mailboxes, see To set up Exchange mailboxes.

Viewing information about Exchange resources

You can view information about the available Exchange resources and the organizations to which they are allocated from Config Center. Only service provider administrators can view this information. For specific procedures on viewing information about Exchange resources, see Delegated Administration Console Help.