Administration

You can administer Exchange Conferencing Server services by using the Exchange Conferencing Services snap-in. You manage each conferencing site within the organization separately. Use a user account with adequate permissions from a computer running Windows 2000 that is a member of the Windows forest for your site. You can also administer these services without Windows 2000 by installing Windows Terminal Services.

You can use the same administrative security groups for Exchange Conferencing Server services that you use to manage Exchange.

Windows Site-Based Service

Unlike the server-based services that Exchange 2000 Server provides, in which mailboxes exist on a specific computer, Exchange Conferencing Server is a Windows site-based service. Exchange Conferencing Server is implemented by a number of interrelated services.

Conference Management Service defines the top-level of the Exchange Conferencing Server installation. You install each instance of Conference Management Service on a computer on a Windows 2000 site. Only one instance of Conference Management Service is active on each site. An additional instance of Conference Management Service on a site idles without processing the conferencing load, acting as a backup host server for the conferencing site. The host server you configure defines which server is active; the first instance of Conference Management Service that you install on the site is the default host server.

To administer Exchange Conferencing Server at a specific location:

1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click Conferencing Manager.
   
   
2. In the console tree, right-click Exchange Conferencing.
   
   
3. Click Manage, and in the scroll box, select the name of the site you want to manage. Then click OK.
   
   
4. In the details pane, double-click Site Name Conferencing Site, where Site Name is the name of the conferencing site.

From here, you can administer Conference Management Service, MCUs, conference resources, and conference technology providers.

Administrative Groups

When installing Conference Management Service, you must specify the Exchange administrative group in which to install the service. These groups allow you to assign administrative permissions to specific users who then control different servers or services. When you install Conference Management Service from a specific Windows 2000 site in an administrative group, all instances of Conference Management Service that you install in that site are placed in the same administrative group; therefore, you can always manage the servers on a specific site from a single administrative group.

Conference Technology Provider Service Management

You can control each service installed as part of Exchange Conferencing Server from Conferencing Manager, Windows 2000 Services (under Administrative Tools), or System Manager that is on the same domain. You can change the state of a service only if you have the associated Windows permissions on that computer.

Logging Reports

Conference Management Service can produce a report log for a number of operations. You can specify the events that you want included in the log.

1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click Conferencing Manager.
2. In the console tree, right-click Exchange Conferencing.
   
   
3. Click Manage, and then in the scroll box, select the name of the site you want to manage, and then click OK.
   
   
4. In the console tree, double-click Exchange Conferencing.
   
   
5. In the details pane, right-click Site Name Conferencing Site, where Site Name is the name of your conferencing site, and then click Properties.
   
   
6. Click Logging, and select the events you want to include in the log.

Each event is written to a comma-delimited text file that is named for the date it was generated. These files are automatically purged according to the same schedule you defined for the Exchange 2000 message log files.

You can find these files in the following directory on the server running Conference Management Service:

\<servername>\<servername>.ecs

Conference technology providers may also provide event logs that you can find in the same location.

These files allow you to analyze the operation of Exchange Conferencing Server; for example, if you find that a large number of users are scheduling online conferences against resources on another Windows site, this may be an indicator that you should deploy an additional conferencing site and associated resources closer to the physical location of the users.