Chapter 9. Configuring the Edge Transport Server Role

Chapter 7 discussed the transport architecture in Exchange Server 2007 and Hub Transport server role. This chapter discusses the Edge Transport server role, which is identical to the Hub server role in many respects and implements the core transport architecture. Although both roles share identical features, they differ in default configuration and functionality. Whereas the focus of the Hub Transport server role is intra-chapterorganizational email communication and compliance, the focusof the Edge Transport server is for inter-organizational email communication, message hygiene, and security. This implementation of the Edge Transport server new to the Exchange line of messaging products arose as a result of increasing Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) volume and the risk of denial of service attacks perpetrated via email. It reduces the attack surface of such threats by providing a means for organizations to segment such email traffic even before it enters the Exchange organization, while preventing access to internal resources. Some of the features of the Edge Transport server have been implemented in earlier versions of Exchange, however this role segmentation was never possible in any other version of Exchange. Message filtering functionality such as sender, Recipient, connection filtering, and so forth, which existed in Exchange Server 2003, have been improved and implemented on the Edge Transport server role.

By the end of this chapter, you'll have an overview of the components of the Edge Transport server and be able to configure the Edge Transport server for email message flow into and out of an Exchange organization, using the Exchange Management Shell. You will also gain an idea of how agents work in message hygiene.