Remote Administration of Exchange Server 2010 Servers : Using the ECP Remotely

ECP is a fully HTML-based application. It is secured with SSL and certificates and securely transmitted via the HTTPS protocol. As such, it is an excellent candidate for remote access.

The ECP can be accessed by an administrator or specialist from any client using a supported browser via the https://<servername>/ecp URL. End users can access the ECP from within the Outlook Web App (OWA) client by clicking on the Options link, which redirects the end user to the https://<servername>/ecp, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. ECP user self-administration view.

The ECP also functions across a firewall, similar to Outlook Web App. It is recommended to proxy the HTTPS traffic through an application level proxy firewall such as Microsoft ISA 2006. Figure 2 shows an example of ECP access using an ISA proxy firewall.

Figure 2. Exchange Control Panel network path.

The diagram in Figure 2 shows clearly that the ECP traffic goes to the Exchange Server 2010 CAS role.