SBS 2008 - The new Exchange Management Shell

Here is some required reading for those of us that like to get under the hood so to speak.

When it comes to Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 integrated into SBS, we have the new management command line interface called the Exchange Management Shell:

Exchange Management Shell

There are many key aspects to managing Exchange 2007 that can only be done from the new shell. In fact, any commands that we can do in the Exchange Management Console (GUI), actually get executed in the Exchange Management Shell.

Here are some resources to get to know exactly how we need to manage Exchange via the new shell:

• Microsoft Download: Introduction to the Exchange Management Shell.
• Microsoft Download: Exchange Management Shell Quick Reference.
• TechNet: Using the Exchange Management Shell.

The command line can be a bit intimidating at first. But, we have some pretty good resources in the above links.

In the above screenshot is the general help command that will show us all of the available cmdlets and more. Pipe that command into a text file and we end up with a 110KB text file! That is no small amount for a plain old text file! ;)

help >C:\ShellCmdlets.txt [Enter]

The in-shell help is definitely refreshing. It looks as though Microsoft has learned, at least in the case of PowerShell, from the *nix community and the very well put together Man Pages (Wikipedia).

Besides in-shell help list at the top of the new shell window, there will be a Tip of the Day. That is a pretty neat little feature to provide us with a, "Oh, I didn't know that" moment. :) Definitely take a moment to read through the tip as it may provide the answer to a question down the road.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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