Replicating Public Folders

When deploying an Exchange 2007 Server with the Mailbox Server role installed into a legacy Exchange organization, Exchange Setup will create one Mailbox database and one Public Folder database on the respective server by default as can be seen in Figure 3.1 below.

Figure 3.1: Exchange 2007 Mailbox and Public Folder Database

The Public Folder database is created so that you can replicate any Public Folder data stored on your legacy Exchange servers to Exchange 2007. Even though you don’t use Public Folders to store data in your environment, there’s one other reason why you might want to keep the Public Folder database mounted on your Exchange 2007 Server. As some of you may already know, Exchange 2007 no longer uses a Public Folder (or more specifically a System Folder named SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY in your Public Folder hierarchy) to store free/busy information for the mailbox users in the organization. Instead free/busy information is stored directly in each user’s mailbox, and retrieved using a new web-based service called the Availability service. The advantage of this new approach is that there no longer are any 15 minute delays when free/busy time for a user is updated. Instead the update will happen instantly. So why would I want to keep the Public Folder database on my Exchange 2007 server, if free/busy information is retrieved using this new method? Well if you still have legacy Outlook clients (that is Outlook 2003 and earlier versions) running in your organization, these clients still need to use Public Folder method to retrieve free/busy information, since only Outlook 2007 supports the new Availability service.

If you don’t use Public Folders to store data and only have Outlook 2007 clients deployed in your organization, you can safely remove the Public Folder database, as you don’t have anything to use it for in that case. This also means you can skip the following steps.

Okay let’s get going with setting up a replica for the Public Folders on our Exchange 2003 Server that should be replicated with the new Exchange 2007 Public Folder database. In order to do so we must use either the Exchange 2003 System Manager or the Exchange Management Shell (EMS). For the purpose of this example we’ll use the Exchange 2003 System Manager.

Note
Managing Public Folders using the Exchange Management Console (EMC) is not possible in Exchange 2007 RTM, but will be integrated with Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1.

To add the Exchange 2007 Public Folder database to the replica list on the Exchange 2003 Server, open the Exchange 2003 System Manager, then expand Administrative Groups > First Administrative Group > Folders > Public Folders as shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2: Public Folders in the Exchange 2003 System Manager

Now open the property page of each public folder, then click the Replication tab and add the Exchange 2007 to the replica list as shown in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3: Public Folder Replication Tab

Note
Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 introduced a new Public Folder Settings Wizard which makes it a breeze to add servers to replica lists. So if you have a lot of Public Folders in your Public Folder tree, I highly recommend you use this wizard. If you have thousands of Public Folders, you might want to use the Public Folder replica scripts located in the Exchange Scripts folder (which can be found under C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server).

Even though you still have legacy Outlook clients (Outlook 2003 and earlier) in your organization, you don’t need to set up a replica for the SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY or the OFFLINE ADDRESS BOOK system folder. This will be done automatically when deploying an Exchange 2007 Server in a legacy Exchange organization.

When all Public Folders have been replicated to the Exchange 2007 Server, you should remove the old Exchange 2000 or 2003 Server(s) from the replica lists. When any Public folder data has been removed from the respective Public folder instances, you can dismount the old Public Folder stores (E2k3 SP2 won’t let you remove the Public Folder store until the data is gone and it won’t get removed while it’s dismounted). You should verify that your clients are still capable of seeing Public Folder data as well as free/busy information and accessing the offline address book before you delete it though. If this is not the case, I recommend you wait a little longer so that you’re sure the replication has occurred properly.

Important:
Outlook Web Access (OWA) 2007 doesn’t include a GUI for accessing Public Folders, so in order to access Public Folders using Internet Explorer you must open a separate browser window and type https://FQDN/public. It’s important you’re aware of this missing feature!

Pointing Internet Clients to the Client Access Server

Now would be a good time to point any Internet clients that are OWA, EAS and RPC over HTTP (now called Outlook AnyWhere) in your organization to the Client Access Server running on the Exchange 2007 Server. If you’re using a firewall such as ISA server (which you do, right?), this change is done at your ISA Server firewall. If you for some reason don’t use an ISA Server in your DMZ, but perhaps a Check Point Firewall 1 or a wannabe firewall such as a Cisco PIX, you should do the redirection there. If you don’t have a firewall you should make the change on the external DNS server hosting your Internet domain.

Note:
If your ISA Server is configured to pre-authenticate your OWA users, you must change the Authentication method for the OWA virtual directory under Server Configuration > Client Access in the EMC to basic authentication, since it’s configured to use forms-based authentication by default.

So will any users with a mailbox on my Exchange 2000 or 2003 Server still be able to use OWA, Exchange ActiveSync or Outlook AnyWhere (formerly known as RPC over HTTP) to access their mailbox? Yes this will work just fine since the Client Access Server is backward compatible and will redirect the clients to the respective legacy mailboxes on the Exchange 2000 or 2003 server.

Note:
When you perform the above changes, your users will no longer be able to access their mailbox using Outlook Mobile Access (OMA), as OMA has been discontinued in Exchange 2007.

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