Windows 2008 R2 x64, ESM 2003 and inherited permissions, oh my!

[Mark_Shoger]

Hi gang,

I'm running into a quandry here. I'm in the process of prototyping our new EV platform, which will be:

• Windows 2008 R2 (x64 w/WOW64)
• EV 9.0.1
• All piled on top of SFHA/VCS 5.1 SP2

Problem is, as we are all aware, ESM 2003 won't run on the x64 platform. From the latest CG:

Windows Server 2003 x64 SP2 or later and Windows Server 2008 x64 or later prevent Exchange Server 2003 ESM from installing, so you cannot synchronize inherited permissions if the Enterprise Vault server uses these operating systems.

Now that's a significant problem, as we rely heavily on inherited perms around here.

I found an interesting article on how to work around this: http://internationalmanofawesome.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/installing-exchange-system-manager-2003-on... but am a little leary of this without having the benefit of being an Exchange admin. Does anyone see anything blatantly wrong with this? Apparently, it worked for this guy.

Is there a supported path to ensure we are able to maintain inherited permissions sync?

v/r,

Mark

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

simply put, the above article would lead to a system that isn't supported by Microsoft or Symantec and most likely you would end up with no connectivity to exchange.

I guess the question is, why do you use Inherited permissions?
For the most part the inherited permissions tend to be things like the BESAdmin, Backup Admins etc etc that only have access to back up items etc, but with inherited permissions, you now find that when backup admins open up Archive Explorer they now see everyones Archive because inherited permissions are turned on.

Inherited Permissions are definitely not to be confused with delegate permissions which are set within outlook and allow users to give access to their mailbox or parts of their mailbox to other users (such as colleagues and personal assistants etc) and this would not rely on inherited permissions being used.

The honest answer is, I don't know how you would achieve Inherited permissions in the newer 64bit environments as ESM has always been a pre-requisitive for that very same reason.

[Mark_Shoger]

Excellent point. I clearly did confuse inherited vs. delegated permissions. I think I can bypass the need for ESM at this point.