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General Properties

Use the General property page to set server locations that determine which public folder replicas and connectors users can access.

Getting to the Server General property page

  1. In the Administrator window, choose Servers, and then select a server to specify a location for.
  2. From the File menu, choose Properties.
  3. Select the General tab.

Setting Locations for Accessing Public Folder Replicas and Restricting Connector Address Spaces

You can enable users to access public folder replicas more efficiently by grouping servers within a site into locations. You can also use locations to limit the scope of users who can access the services of a connector.

Using locations for public folder access   When users in a site attempt to access public folder replicas, Microsoft Exchange Server automatically searches for public folder replicas within its location. If it can't locate the requested public folder replica in its own location, it searches servers outside the location. For example, you can group servers within a site into locations for load balancing your servers or to prevent users from accessing public folders across a slow connection.

If you want users to access public folder replicas on certain servers by default, you can create a wildcard location called "*." Microsoft Exchange Server searches for public folder replicas on * servers unless you've specified another preferred location for accessing the public folder replicas. You can use the "*" location if you have powerful servers with high-bandwidth connectivity that users should use when accessing public folder replicas. For example, suppose your users can connect to public folder replicas (in offices in London, Redmond, and Manchester) that are all in the same site. However, the network connection between Manchester and London is slower than the connection between London and Redmond. To ensure that your users don't attempt the slower network connection, you can create a location for London so that users attempt to connect to a server in London first. If a public folder replica in London isn't available, users will then attempt to connect to public folder replica servers in Redmond that are configured with a location of *. They will not attempt connections to servers in Manchester unless the attempt to access a replica in Redmond fails.

Using locations for connector access   If you restrict the scope on a connector address space to a location, only messages originating from servers in the same location as the connector server are routed through the connector. For more information, see Microsoft Exchange Server Operations.

  1. Select the General tab.
  2. Type or select the name of the server location in the Server location box.
    3. To add a server to "*," type a * in the Server location box.