Work with the EMC and the Exchange Management Shell

Let’s review the interface options of the EMC and the command syntax behind the EMS.

The Exchange Management Console

Note from Figure 1 that the console layout is easy to work with. Many who have worked with System Manager in Exchange 2003 are quite pleased with the changes, which make it easier for us to locate and access those dialog boxes we need.

Figure 1. The EMC.

Note the Navigation Tree on the left hand side. We refer you to this tree often by instructing you to locate one of the four work centers, which include the following:

• Organization Configuration

• Server Configuration

• Recipient Configuration

• Toolbox

Note also the Result pane, the Work pane, and the Action pane. When being given instruction on how to locate a certain dialog or action, you are instructed to navigate the console initially, through the work centers and static containers. Then, you might need to select items in the Result or Work pane before choosing your action.

Up near the top, there is a Show/Hide Action Pane button that you can use to turn off the Action pane. At that point, you can right-click items in your other panes to see what actions are available or you can use the Action menu. You can also Show/Hide the Console Tree.

From the View menu, you can Add/Remove Columns. You can also select Customize and turn on or off various features of the console.

The Exchange Management Shell

The EMS is not designed to confuse you or make your life harder. In fact, many situations occur where you won’t need to even consider the EMS, but for those times that you do, you’ll find that a simple line of code is going to pack a lot of power.

When you first open the EMS, you are presented with a Welcome, some basic commands to get you started, and a Tip of the Day (as shown in Figure 2).

Figure 2. The EMS.

Commands are created through verb-noun pairings called cmdlets. Consider using simple ones such as get-mailbox, move-mailbox, get-storagegroup, and so forth.

There are only 26 different verbs at your disposal, so it shouldn’t take you too long to catch on. These include the following:

To see a full list of commands, you can type get-command at the EMS prompt. To see only the Exchange commands, you can type get-excommand. For help with any of these, you just type help and the cmdlet name. It provides you with information on the cmdlet and the parameters that go along with it to make that cmdlet more helpful. Those parameters might be -Identity, -WhatIf, -SortBy, and so on.

If you recall the verb part but not the noun, you can always type the verb and then press the Tab key. It continues to scroll through your options alphabetically until it reaches your cmdlet.

You are able to direct the output of your initial command to another command. This is called pipelining and the pipe symbol (|) is used to accomplish this. The second part of the command might process the results even further by filtering, sorting, grouping, or enabling aspects on the results of the first part of the command.

The primary goal of this section is not to overwhelm you, but is simply to get you started with PowerShell and the Exchange Management Shell. The majority of our lessons show you the EMC side to Exchange administration, but sometimes the CLI is unavoidable, as noted earlier when we performed the EdgeSync process.