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About Mapping DCOM Exchange Connectors to Microsoft Exchange Servers

This topic provides background information about how DCOM Exchange Connector applications work with Microsoft Exchange Servers. It is important to understand this information before proceeding to the task, Configuring DCOM Exchange Connector Parameters.

This task is an optional step in Process of Configuring the DCOM Exchange Connector.

There are two basic ways you can configure DCOM Exchange Connector applications to work with Microsoft Exchange Servers: without Connector Application Map records and with Connector Application Map records.

If you have implemented a simple network topology, you do not have to map DCOM Exchange Connectors to Microsoft Exchange Servers. You only have to configure Connector Application Map records if you want to specify different Exchange Connector settings for different Microsoft Exchange Servers, or if you have implemented a distributed network topology for performance reasons. The following paragraphs describe each configuration type in more detail.

Configurations That Exclude Connector Application Map Records

In this configuration type, you do not create any Connector Application Map records. SSSE dynamically assigns a DCOM Exchange Connector application to synchronize each user, as required—any DCOM Exchange Connector computer can perform synchronizations with any Microsoft Exchange Server. This configuration type is most useful for load balancing in implementations where wide-area network performance is not a major factor, or where the number of Microsoft Exchange Servers exceeds the number of DCOM Exchange Connector computers.

This configuration type has the following characteristics:

• There are no Connector Application Map records in the Siebel implementation.
• Each DCOM Exchange Connector computer can synchronize users on any Microsoft Exchange Server.
• When the DCOM Exchange Connector has to run a new instance of the application, it counts the number of connector applications that are running on each DCOM Exchange Connector computer. The connector runs the new instance of the application on the computer that has the fewest Exchange Connector applications running when it is checked.

For information about creating the Engine Shares that designate which computers run the DCOM Exchange Connector application, see Setting Up the DCOM Exchange Connector Share Directory.

Configurations That Include Connector Application Map Records

In this configuration type, you create Connector Application Map records that assign specific DCOM Exchange Connector computers to handle synchronizations with specific Microsoft Exchange Servers. This configuration type is most useful if you want to optimize performance in a Siebel implementation that has Microsoft Exchange Servers in widely scattered geographical locations—performance might be optimized when each DCOM Exchange Connector computer is located close to the Exchange Server that the connector synchronizes.

This configuration type has the following characteristics:

• Each Connector Application Map record assigns a DCOM Exchange Connector computer to synchronize users on a single Microsoft Exchange Server. In Connector Application Map records, each DCOM Exchange Connector computer is represented by its Engine Share. Engine Shares are UNC path configurations that indicate which computers are to run DCOM Exchange Connector applications (sspicnea.exe files).
• A Microsoft Exchange Server can be listed in multiple Connector Application Map records, but DCOM Exchange Connector computers can only be designated by one record each. This means each Microsoft Exchange Server can be synchronized by multiple DCOM Exchange Connector computers, but no DCOM Exchange Connector computer can be assigned to synchronize more than one Exchange Server.
• The maximum number of Connector Application Map records you can create is the same as the number of Engine Shares you have.
• If a Connector Application Map does not assign any DCOM Exchange Connector computers to a particular Microsoft Exchange Server, then any DCOM Exchange Connector with a PIMSI Engine Share that is not already mapped to an Exchange Server can synchronize the unmapped Exchange Server.
• When the DCOM Exchange Connector has to run a new instance of the application, it counts the number of Exchange Connector applications that are running on each DCOM Exchange Connector computer that is assigned to the relevant Microsoft Exchange Server. The connector runs the new instance of the application on the computer that has the fewest DCOM Exchange Connector applications running when it is checked.

For information on creating Connector Application Maps, see Configuring DCOM Exchange Connector Parameters.