Admin Question

admin_2 · ‎06-22-2001

I was wondering if you or one of the moderators could answer a general administration queston about the NME ( NEAXMail EXPRESS ) software 2.4.5.73. FYI: NEAXMAIL Express is identical to AD-120, with a different NEC name. This is not a problem, or an issue, just a general question a user had that went beyond the scope of the documentation, as well as my own knowledge on the product. I read everything before I wrote you. We have a company who is plannig to install 16 NME's in the next year. The NME Servers will be in different physical locations, but within the same Exchange Site. The want a way to be able to manage all of the different NME machines as easily as possible. Here is what they asked: 1) Can one Voicemail Subsriber account from one Server manage all the NME boxes via the Internet Explorer SA ? ( I did not think so, but I was not sure, that is why I asked. I have never delt with anything this large. ) 2) Does the last question relate the the option in during the installation of NME software, ( not Exchange ) where the software prompts to join an existing Voicemail site ? ( I would assume that someone would do this to centrally manage multiple NME Servers but, The documentation I have on this is very vague ) 3) What would be the best way to manage the discribed customer's future configuration ? If you could answer, or pass this on to one of the folks there who lives and breathes this stuff, I would totally appreciate it. Thanks, Hensontech

Report Inappropriate Content · ‎06-22-2001

There’s no built in way in 2.4.x to have one account administer multiple Unity servers… however, you can work around it fairly easily.

When you attempt to attach to the SA on a particular Unity server we get your NT account information and turn around and ask Exchange which Exchange mail user account(s) are associated with that NT account. If one or more are found we then look to see if any of them are associated with a Class of Service that allows access to the SA. If so, we let you in.

As such you need a subcriber account on each Unity server you want to attach to using this “master admin” account. One way to do this is to associate that person’s NT account with the Example Administrator account created automatically with every Unity installation. By default this guy doesn’t have an NT account associated with him at all, so adding the admins NT link to it causes no harm.

Once this is done you can basically just have separate shortcuts for this person to use to attach to each of the Unity servers they want to administer. Assuming everyone’s in one big NT Domain, this is real straight forward. If you have multiple domains it gets a bit messier. You’ll have to create NT accounts in each domain that this user can authenticate with or do domain trusts or the like.

Unity 3.0 is going to approach this problem a little better since with ActiveDirctory you can’t get cute with multiple “exchange” accounts being linked to the same “NT” account since the directories are all one big thing now. We’ll have a separate table of user SIDs that are allowed access into each Unity server regardless of if they are a subscriber on that box or not. This will make for a much cleaner model for admins accessing and administering multiple boxes in a large domain.

Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)