Microsoft -- What is the exact functionality that is lost (if anything) in Exchange 2007 is the customer does not roll out an Exchange 2007edge transport server? For example, does IMF still work, etc? It appears in Beta2 that lots of functions are lost without an Edge transport server. What happens in the case of Small Businesses where they only have a single server?

Hub transport role is mainly for routing, transport policy and compliance. Edge server role is mainly design for message hygeine. With that said, you can still enable the edge agent on the hub transport role server to perform message hygeine functionality on the hub transport. See this post for more info. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=630502&SiteID=17 cheers

IIRC, you have to have an Edge server in order to do message-level encryption for outbound mail. You also need an Edge to do the automatic Edge to Edge encryption (between orgs). It's possible this isn't correct, and I'll check tomorrow, but this is what I recall.

Wow - first I've heard of that script. Ok. So would someone from the Exchange 2007 team please explain why we need to run a script and not check a checkbox on the custom install screen?? I don't get why the EDGE role is greyed out during install of a mailbox server if this is allowed via the script? Thanks

Thanks - any information you can dig up would be appreciated.

sipcomm wrote: Wow - first I've heard of that script. Ok. So would someone from the Exchange 2007 team please explain why we need to run a script and not check a checkbox on the custom install screen?? I don't get why the EDGE role is greyed out during install of a mailbox server if this is allowed via the script? Thanks I'm not from the Exchange team so I guess I couldn't give you an official answer on that. But as far as why the edge role is greyed out when you are installing Exchange 2007 with the mailbox server roleselected, this is because the edge is a special server role that cannot co-exist with other server role, it cannot even be joined to AD. So if we are talking about a small Exchange environment (such as SBS), you might have an all in one server minus edge but you are still able to do message hygiene by running the sript. Also, I would guess that for SBS 2007, there would be a different install routine for the Exchange component that will include the message hygiene out of the box. Cheers

All the script does is enable the message hygiene agents. It doesn't do anything else that is specific to the Edge role. As Lee c y pointed out, there are specific requirements in order to install the Edge role. It cannot be joined to your production AD domain. You can either leave it in a workgroup (ADAM instance will be installed/used), or you can join it to another forest that does not have an Exchange org (separate forest for your DMZ). Edge is also the only role that cannot co-exist with any other roles. Also, remember this is still Beta2. It may very well be that there will be a different way of enabling those agents when we get to RTM.

The reason that the message hygiene agents are not installed by default on Hub Transport servers is that in all but the smallest installations, you will want some kind of antispam/antivirus running at your network border: either self-run or a hosted service. One such self-run server is the Edge Transport server. Of course there are others. In either case, there is no need to run message hygiene agents on the Hub Transport server as it would be superfluous. For those customers who do not have any other protection, including for SBS, it is possible to enable the hygiene agents using the provided script. Also, Edge Transport always uses ADAM. If the Edge Transport server happens to be a member of a domain, it simply ignores that and uses its ADAM for its configuration and recipient configuration. Because Edge Transport is explicitly meant to be deployed in a perimeter network, it doesn't make sense for it to be installed on the same server as other servers.