Exchange Server Interview Questions

 Q.What is Exchange Server? Ans: Exchange Server is a Microsoft’s Messaging system which provides Industry leading Email, calendaring and unified Messaging Q.What are the different Exchange 2003 versions? Ans: Exchange server 5.5 Exchange Server 2000 Exchange Server 2003 Exchange Server 2007 Exchange Server 2010 Q.What are the diff erences between Exchange Sever 2003 Standard and Enterprise Editions? Following are the difference between Exchange server 2003 Standard and Enterprise Edition. Ans:

Feature Standard Edition Enterprise Edition  
 
Storage groups support 1 storage group 4 storage groups  
Number of databases per storage 2 databases 5 databases  
 
group      
Individual database size 16 gigabytes (GB) Maximum 16 terabytes, limited only by  
    hardware  
Exchange Clustering Not supported Supported  
 
X.400 connector Not included Included  

Q.What are the main differences between Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000/2003? Ans: Exchange 2000 does not have its own directory or directory service; it uses Active Directory instead. Exchange 2000 uses native components of Windows 2000 (namely, IIS and its SMTP, NNTP, W3SVC and other components, Kerberos and others) for many core functions. SMTP is now a full peer to RPC, and is it the default transport protocol between Exchange 2000 servers. Exchange 2000 supports Active/Active clustering and was recently certified for Windows 2000 Datacenter. Exchange 2000 scales much higher. It boasts conferencing services and instant messaging. Q.What are the minimum hardware requirements for Exchange Server 2003? Ans: Processor – Pentium 133 MHz Operating System – Windows 2000 SP3 Memory – 256 MB Disk Space – 200 MB for system files and 500 MB where Exchange Server installation. File System – NTFS Q.What are the steps involved in Exchange Server installation? Ans: Prerequisites Installation – ASP .Net, IIS, SMTP, NNTP and WWW services Installation Forest Preparation Domain Preparation Exchange Server 2003 Installation Q.Why not install Exchange on the same machine as a DC? Ans: The main reason behind not to install Exchange Server is, when we used to restart the Exchange server for any reason it will take lot of time to shut down the Exchange Server services. Q.What can you do and what will be the effect if ASP.NET service is not available while installing Exchange Server 2003? Ans: ASP .Net files are important for authentication, delegation and securing the web publication. Before installing exchange Server 2003 ASP .Net should be installed. Q.What are Exchange Server 2003 deployment tools? Ans: The Exchange Server 2003 Deployment Tools are a compilation of old and new Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) support tools that you can use to prepare Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 and the Microsoft Active Directory directory service infrastructure for the installation of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Installation and Upgrade Prerequisites Enabling Windows Services DCDiag Tool NetDiag Tool ForestPrep DomainPrep Q.What are the Windows versions supported by Exchange Server 2003? Ans: Windows 2000 Service pack 3 ( Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter Edition) Windows 2003 Service pack 1 ( Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter Edition) Q.In which domains domainprep must be run? Ans: The Forest root Domain All domain that will contain Exchange Server 2003 All Domain that will contain Exchange Mailbox enable objects. Q.What is ForestPrep? Ans: Forest prep updates the schema and configuration partition in Active directory. Extend the schema to include Exchange server 2003 specific classes and attributes To run the Forest Prep, Administrator should have Schema and Enterprise Admin permission over the Domain Q.What is DomainPrep? Ans: Domain Prep prepares the Domain partion in Active Directory. Forest prep should be run only once in forest where Domain Prep should be run in following Servers. The Forest root Domain All domain that will contain Exchange Server 2003 All Domain that will contain Exchange Mailbox enable objects Q.Which two groups are created by DomainPrep? Ans: The domain prep switch creates the groups and permissions required by exchange Server 2003. Two security groups created Exchange Enterprise Servers – Domain Local group contains all Exchange Server in a forest Exchange Domain Server – Global Group that contains all Exchange servers running in the Domain that you have selected. Q.What DomainPrep does? Ans: Domain Prep Updates the Domain partition and Creates a Two New Security Groups for Exchange Server 2003 Exchange Enterprise Servers Exchange Domain Servers Q.How to run ForestPrep? Ans: Go to the Command prompt and Type the following D:\setup\i386\setup.exe /forestprep Where D drive represents the CD drive. Note: it will ask for the Administrator Account that has the required permission to run the Setup. Q.How unattended installation of Exchange Server 2003 works? Ans: Unattended installation are useful for rapidly deploying subsequent Exchange Server 2003 installation into an existing organization. The process of creating the file is essentially the same as the process for a manual setup selecting the component you want to install and the installation path, choosing whether to create a new organization or to join existing one; agreeing the license and so on.. Instead of doing manual installation the Exchange installation wizard writes the configuration file to .ini file. specifically for use with the /unattendfile setup switch to start the installation. Q.When you can use the unattended installation of Exchange Server 2003?

  1. Unattended Installation of Exchange Server 2003 is very useful when you are going to install Exchange Server remotely.
  2. It’s also useful when you are deploying number of New Exchange Server in Existing Organization. We can save time deploying multiple servers by automating the Entire installation procedure

Q.What’s New in Exchange Server 2013? Ans: Below are the new features in Exchange Server 2013

  • New Unified Management console called Exchange Admin Center
  • Server Roles architecture changed to two Server Roles – Mailbox Server Role and Client Access Server Role
  • Public Folders are now in Mailbox Databases which can be replicated to other mailbox databases
  • Site Mailbox introduced to allow the user to access the SharePoint sites and emails from Outlook 2013, using the same client interface
  • Exchange 2013 Offers greater integration with SharePoint 2013 and Lync 2013
  • Brand new Outlook Web App optimized for tablets and mobile devices and also for desktops and laptops
  • Unified Messaging in Exchange 2013 comes with same voice mail features in Exchange 2010, but the architecture change to have only two server roles made all the UM related components, services and functionality are now available in Mailbox Server Role
  • Users can Move Mailboxes in batches where it has an option to send mailbox move reports as emails
  • Lot of enhancement in the Database Availability Group like Managed Availability and Managed Store etc
  • Exchange work load is a new feature in Exchange 2013 defined for the purpose of Exchange System Resource Management
  • Exchange 2013 is completely rewritten so deploying and keeping exchange 2013 to up to date is now easier
  • Data Loss Preventions is a new feature which allows to protective the company sensitive data and inform user of internal compliance policies

Q.What is Exchange Admin Center? Ans: Exchange Admin Center is the new web based Exchange Management Console for Exchange Server 2013, it allows for ease of use and is optimized for management of On-Premises, Online and hybrid Exchange deployments. EAC replaces Exchange Management Console and Exchange Control Panel, but ECP is still the url for Exchange Admin Center New features in Exchange Admin Center

  1. List View – More than 20,000 objects can be viewed in EAC, where legacy ECP allows only 500 objects
  2. Add/Remove columns for recipients
  3. Public folders can be managed from Exchange Admin Center
  4. Long running process will be notified in the notification bar
  5. Role Based Access Control user editor can be done from EAC
  6. Unified Messaging tools like call statistics, and user call logs can be accessed from EAC

Q.Explain the Exchange 2013 Architecture? Ans: Legacy versions of Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 released with 5 server roles, ie, Mailbox, Client Access, Hub Transport, Unified Messaging and Edge Transport server. Server role architecture has been changed in Exchange 2013 which released with only two server roles. Mailbox Server role – It holds the same function of Mailbox, the client access protocols, Hub Transport and Unified Messaging server role in Exchange 2010 Client Access Server role – work as the client access server role in Exchange 2010, Exchange 2010 work as  only stateless server, where it doesn’t do any data rendering,  and nothing will  be stored or queued in Client Access Server role. CAS offers all usual client access protocols: HTTP, POP and IMAP, and SMTP Q.Why Exchange 2013 architecture has been changed with two server roles? Ans: Exchange 2007 and 2010 were architect with certain technology constraint that existed at that time, where CPU performance was the Key constraint when Exchange 2007 was released and to alleviate the situation Server roles were introduced. However server roles in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 are tightly coupled Nowadays, CPU horse power is less expensive and it is not a constrain factor, with that constraint lifted, primary goal for Exchange 2013 is simplicity of scale, hardware utilization and failure isolation. So Microsoft reduced the number of server roles to two as Client Access Server Role and Mailbox Server Role Q.What are the benefits on the architecture change by having two server roles in Exchange 2013? Ans: Having two server roles with Mailbox Server includes all the traditional components fount in Exchange 2010: the client access protocols, transport service, mailbox databases and unified messaging and the Client Access Server role to provide authentication, limited redirection and proxy services. New architecture provides the below benefits

  1. The Client Access Server and Mailbox Server become “Loosely Coupled”. All process and activity for a specific mailbox occurs on the mailbox server that holds the active database copy, eliminating concerns of version compatibility between CAS and Mailbox Server
  2. Version Upgrade flexibility – Client Access server can be upgraded independently and in any order.
  3. Session affinity to client access server role is not required – In Exchange 2013, Client access and mailbox components available on the same mailbox server, because the client access server simply proxies all connections to a specific mailbox server, no session affinity is required
  4. Only two namespace is required for Exchange 2013

Q.What is change related to MAPI access using outlook in Exchange 2013? Ans: Two server role architects changed the outlook client connectivity behaviour; RPC is no longer a supported direct access protocol. This means that all the outlook connectivity must take place using RPC over HTTP knows as Outlook Anywhere. Because of this behaviour, there is no need to have RPC client access service on CAS which reduces two name spaces that required for site-resilient solution. Q.Explain the change in outlook client connection behaviour when compared with Exchange 2010? Ans: Outlook clients no longer connect to a server FQDN as they have done in all previous versions of Exchange. Outlook uses Autodiscover to create a new connection point comprised of mailbox GUID, @ symbol, and the domain portion of the user’s primary SMTP address. This change results in a near elimination of the unwelcome message of “Your administrator has made a change to your mailbox. Please restart.” Only Outlook 2007 and higher versions are supported with Exchange 2013. Q.What is Managed Store in Exchange 2013? Ans: Managed store is the name of the newly rewritten information store process, Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Service.exe andMicrosoft.Exchange.Store.worker.exe, it is integrated with Microsoft Exchange replication server to provide higher availability through improve resiliency. Also the Managed store has been architected to enable more granular management of resource consumption and faster root cause analysis though improved diagnostics. Managed Store works with replication service to manage mailbox databases, which continues to ESE as DB engine, Exchange 2013 includes change the mailbox database schema that provides many optimization over previous versions of Exchange and Replication Services is responsible for all availability related to Mailbox Servers. This change provides faster database failover and better disk failure handling. Q.What is a Site Mailbox? Ans: Site Mailbox is a new type of mailbox in Exchange 2013, where it improves collaboration and user productivity by allowing access to both documents in a SharePoint site and email messages in outlook 2013 using the same client interface. Q.What happened to Public Folders in Exchange 2013? Ans: Special type mailbox called Public folder mailbox introduced in Exchange Server 2013, which will store both the hierarchy and public folder content. This provides an advantage of the existing high availability and storage technologies of the mailbox store. Legacy Public folder database concept not in exchange 2013 and Public Folder replication now user the continuous replication model as like Mailbox Database. Q.How the Mail flow Occur in Exchange Server 2013? Ans: Due the architectural change, Mail flow in Exchange 2013 occurs via Transport Pipeline, it is collection of Transport services, connections, components and queues that work together to route the messages to the categorizer in the transport service on a mailbox server inside the organization. Messages from outside organization enter the transport pipeline through a receive connector in the Front End Transport service on a client access server and then routed to the Transport Service on a Mailbox Server and the Mailbox Transport Delivery Service deliver the email to local mailbox database Message from inside organization enter the Transport Service on a Mailbox Server in following ways, receive connector, Pick Up or Replay Directory, Mailbox Transport Service or Agent Submission. Those emails can be relayed to Front End transport service on Client Access Server using the Transport Service on Mailbox Server and sent outside Q.Explain the New Transport Pipeline in Short? Ans: Front End Transport Service in Client Access Server acts as a stateless proxy for all inbound and outbound external SMTP traffic for Exchange 2013 organization. It won’t inspect message content, only communicates with the Transport Service on a Mailbox Server, and doesn’t queue any messages locally. Transport Service in Mailbox server is identical to Hub Transport server, it handles all SMTP mail flow for the organization, perform message categorization, and performs content inspection. It won’t communicate directly with Mailbox Database that task will be handled by Mailbox Transport Service. So the Transport Service routes messages between the mailbox transport service, the transport service and the front end transport service. Mailbox Transport Service running on Mailbox server consists of two separate services: the Mailbox Transport Submission Service and Mailbox Transport Delivery Service. Mailbox Transport Delivery Service receives emails from Transport Service on the local or different mailbox server and connects to the local mailbox databases using Exchange RPC to deliver the message Mailbox Transport Submission Service connects to local mailbox database using RPC to retrieve messages and submits the messages over SMTP to the Transport Service on the local Mailbox server or other Mailbox Servers. Q.What are the enhancements in Batch Mailbox Move on Exchange 2013? Ans: Below are the enhancements on Exchange 2013 Batch Mailbox Moves,

  • Multiple mailboxes move in large batches.
  • Email notification during move with reporting.
  • Automatic retry and automatic prioritization of moves.
  • Primary and personal archive mailboxes can be moved together or separately.
  • Option for manual move request finalization, which allows you to review a move before you complete it.

Q.What are new options included in Exchange 2013 related with High Availability and Site Resilience? Ans: Managed Availability – Internal Monitoring and recovery are integrated to prevent failures, proactively restore services, and initiate failovers automatically or alert admin to take action. Managed Store – Integrated with Microsoft Exchange Replication Service to provide higher availability Multiple Databases per disk – Exchange 2013 supports multiple databases both active and passive on same disk. Automatic Reseed – If a disk fails, database copy stored on that disk is copied from the active database copy to a spare disk on the same server. Automatic recovery from storage failures Lagged copies can now care themselves to a certain using automatic log play down Single copy alert task is removed and included in the managed availability component DAG networks can be automatically configuration by the system bases on the configuration settings, DAG now can distinguish between MAPI and Replication networks and configure DAG network automatically. Q.What are the features discontinued in Exchange 2013 when compared with Exchange 2010? Ans: Below are few features that are discontinued in Exchange 2013

  • Hub Transport Server Role and Unified Messaging Server
  • Exchange Management Console and Exchange Control Panel
  • Outlook 2003 support and RPC over TCP method of Mailbox access is removed
  • S/MIME, Search folders and Spell check in OWA removed
  • Linked Connectors are removed
  • Anti-spam agents can be management only from Exchange Management Shell
  • Connection filtering agent removed
  • Managed Folder are removed
  • Tools like Exchange Best Practice Analyzer, Mail flow troubleshooter, performance monitor, performance troubleshooter and routing log viewer are removed

Q.What are the features discontinued in Exchange 2013 when compared with Exchange 2007? Ans: Below are few features discontinued in Exchange 2013 that are available in Exchange Server 2007

  • Storage Groups and Public Folder Databases
  • Exchange WebDAV API and ESE streaming backup API
  • High Availability concepts CCR, LCR, SCR & SCC are not available
  • Export-Mailbox / Import-Mailbox Cmdlets and Move-Mailbox cmdlets set
  • Managed folders

Exchange Server Interview Questions     Exchange Server Online Training Q.What’s New in Outlook Web App 2013? Ans: Lot of new feature available in Outlook Web App 2013 below are few new features

  • Apps can be accessed from Outlook Web App
  • Contacts can be linked to see all the data in a single view
  • Ability to connect to user’s linkedIn account and add the contacts automatically to OWA
  • Multiple calendars can be viewed in a Merged view
  • Streamlined user interface for tablets and smartphones which supports use of touch

Q.Inform the features that are not available on OWA 2013? Ans: Below are the features that are available in previous versions but not available on Exchange Server 2013 Outlook Web APP

  • Shared Mail folders access is not available
  • Distribution list moderation cannot be done from OWA
  • S/MIME support
  • Reading pane at the bottom of the window
  • Ability to reply to email messages sent as attachments
  • Search folders in not available

Q.What are the prerequisites required to Install Exchange Server 2013? Ans: Below prerequisites are required to install Exchange Server 2013 Operating System:

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 or later
  • Windows Server 2012

Additional Prerequisites:

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 (pre install in Windows Server 2012)
  • Windows Management Framework 3.0
  • Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 4.0, Core Runtime 64-bit
  • Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack 64 bit
  • Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack SP1 64 bit
  • ADDS and few windows features

Domain Controller:

  • Forest functional level has to Windows Server 2003
  • Schema Master run on Windows Server 2003 SP2 or later

Q.On which Operating System Database Availability Group is supported? Ans: DAG is supported on Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacenter Editions or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Enterprise Edition. Windows Server 2008 R2 Sp1 standard edition won’t support DAG Q.On what conditions Exchange 2013 can coexists with previous version of Exchange servers? Ans: Exchange 2003 and Earlier versions: Not Supported Exchange 2007: Exchange 2007 SP3 with Update Rollup 10 on all Exchange 2007 servers and Exchange 2013 CU2 and later can coexist Exchange 2010: Exchange 2010 SP3 on all Exchange 2010 Servers and Exchange 2013 CU2 or later can coexist Q.What are the Editions available in Exchange Server 2013? Ans: Exchange 2013 available in two editions: Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition Standard Edition allows only 5 databases to mounted (including active and passive copy) and Enterprise Edition allows 50 databases on RTM version of Exchange and 100 databases on CU2 and later versions. Recovery Database will not be counted on this. Q.What will happen to Exchange 2013 RTM version when 120 days trial period expires? Ans: Exchange 2013 functionality will not loss when trial period expires, so you can maintain lab without having to reinstall the trial version. Q.What the supportable clients that can access Exchange 2013 Mailbox? Ans: Exchange 2013 mailbox can be access by the following clients

    • Outlook 2013
    • Outlook 2010 SP1 with Outlook 2010 November 2012 update
    • Outlook 2007 SP3 with Outlook 2007 November 2010 update
    • Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition
  • Outlook for Mac 2011

Q.What are the vision and Goals of Exchange Server 2010 high availability? Ans: Vision – deliver a fast, easy to deploy and operate, economical solution that can provide high availability solution for exchange server Goals – 1. deliver a high availability and site resilience that is native to exchange

  1. Enables less expensive and less complex storage
  2. Simplify administration and reduce support cost
  3. Increase end-end availability
  4. Support exchange server 2010 online

Q.What are the high availability solutions introduced in Exchange Server 2010? Ans:

  1. Unified technology for high availability and site resilience
  2. New framework for high creating high available mailboxes
  3. Evolution of continuous replication
  4. Can be deployed on a range of storage option

Q.What are the High Availability features introduce in Exchange Server 2010? Ans: Mailbox resiliency – unified high availability and site resiliency Database Availability Group – a group of up to 16 Mailbox servers that holds the set of replicated databases Mailbox database copy – a mailbox database (.edb files and log file) that is either active or passive copy of the mailbox database Database Mobility – the ability of a single mailbox database to be replicated to and mounted on other mailbox servers RPC Client Access Service – a Client Access Server feature that provides a MAPI endpoint for outlook clients Shadow redundancy – a transport feature that provides redundancy for messages for the entire time they are in transit Incremental deployment – the ability to deploy high availability or site resilience after the exchange is installed Exchange third party replication API – an exchange provided API that enables use of third party replication for DAG Q.What is high availability? Ans: High Availability is a solution that provide data availability; service availability and automatic recover from site failures Q.What is disaster recovery? Ans: It is a procedure used to manually a recover a failure Q.What is site resilience? Ans: Site Resilience is a disaster recovery solution used for recovery from site failure Q.What is switch over and failover? Ans: A switch over is a manual activation one or more databases when failure occurs A failover is an automatic activation of one or more databases after failure Q.What are the concepts deprecated in Exchange Server 2010? Ans:

  1. Storage groups
  2. Database identified by the servers which they live
  3. Server names as part of database name

Clustered Mailbox server

  1. Pre-installation of failover cluster
  2. Running setup in failover mode
  3. Moving a CMS identity between servers
  4. Shared storage

Two high availability copy limits Private and public networks Q.Explain new features in Exchange Server 2010 High Availability? Ans:

  1. No need to failover a server if a single database fails
  2. Failover and switchover occurs at the database level and not the server level
  3. With the new HA feature; we can have 100 databases per server
  4. Databases are tied to specific server can be float across servers in organization

Q.Give an idea on Exchange server 2007 High Availability Architecture changes? Ans: In exchange server 2007 HA, there are four HA features available, they are LCR, SCR, SCC and CCR. The concept of LCR and SCC has been completely removed in Exchange server 2010. The concept of SCR and CCR are incorporated with the new HA feature (Database Availability Group) in Exchange Server 2010. Q.What’s new in Exchange Management Console? Ans: In Exchange Server 2010 management console, the following are the new features included

  1. Built on remote power shell and RBAC
  2. Multiple forest support
  3. Cross premises Exchange 2010 Management – includes Mailbox move
  4. Recipient bulk edit
  5. PowerShell command logging

Q.What is Exchange Control Panel? Ans:  ECP it’s a new and simplified web based management console and it’s a browser based management client for end user, administrators and specialist, ECP can be accessible via URL, browsers and outlook 2010, ECP deployed as part of the client access server role, Simplified user administration for management tasks and it’s RBAC aware Q.Who can use ECP and what are the manageable options? Ans:  Specialist and administrators – administrator can delegate to specialist e.g. help desk operators – Change user name password etc., department administrator – change OU and e-discovery administrators – legal department. End users – comprehensive self-service tools for end users – fetch phone number, changing name and create groups Hosted customers – tenant administrators and tenant end users Q.What is ROLA BASED ACCESS CONTROL? Ans: RBAC is new authorization model in Exchange Server 2010, easy to delegate and customize permission; this replaced the permission model used in Exchange Server 2007. Your role is defined by ―What you do‖ RBAC includes self administration, used by EMC, EMS, and ECP Q.Who are all affected by RBAC in Exchange Server 2010? Administrator – Role Groups and Universal security groups – End – User – role assignment policy we can set read /write Q.How to delegate a Role ? Ans:

  1. Create the management role
  2. Change the new management roles entries by removing old entries
  3. Create a management scope if required
  4. Assign the new management role

Q.What is Remote power shell in Exchange Server 2010? Ans: In Exchange 2010, the management architecture is based on Remote PowerShell included with Windows PowerShell 2.0. Remote PowerShell provides an RBAC-based permission model making it possible to grant much more granular permissions (Exchange 2007 used ACLs), standard protocols that makes it easier to manage Exchange 2010 servers through firewalls, and explicitly separates ―client‖ and ―server‖ portion of the cmdlet processing Q.What are the supportable OS platforms to install Exchange Management console? Ans:  In Exchange server 2010 all functions are 64 bit only, admin tools requires 64 bit OS, Exchange management tools can be installed in 64 bit OS like vista, server 2008 and windows 7, Remote PowerShell management can be installed in x86 and x64 bit OS Q.What is federated sharing? Ans:  Federated Sharing allows easy sharing of availability information, calendar, and contacts with recipients in external federated organizations Q.What are the options shared in federated sharing? Ans:

  1. Free busy information
  2. Calendar and contact sharing
  3. Sharing policy

Q.Explain the federation commands in Exchange server 2010? Ans: Establish federation trust = New-federation Trust

  • Install signing certificate on CAS servers
  • Exchange certificate with federation gateway

Prove domain ownership = domainname.com IN TXT AppId = xxxxxxxx

  • Create DNS TXT record

Add domain to trust = set-federatedOrganizationIdentifier Add-federatedDomain

  • Must be accepted domain

Q.How to establish federated sharing in Exchange Server 2010? Ans:

  1. Create trust with certificate exchange
  2. Prove domain ownership
  3. Add domains

Q.What is Microsoft Federation Gateway? Ans:  Exchange Server 2010 uses Microsoft Federation Gateway (MFG), an identity service that runs in the cloud, as the trust broker. Exchange organizations wanting to use Federation establish a Federation Trust with MFG, allowing it to become a federation partner to the Exchange organization. The trust allows users authenticated by Active Directory , known as the identity provider (IP), to be issued Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) delegation tokens by MFG. The delegation tokens allow users from one federated organization to be trusted by another federated organization. With MFG acting as the trust broker, organizations are not required to establish multiple individual trust relationships with other organizations. Users can access external resources using a single sign-on (SSO) experience Q.What is Federation Trust? Ans: A Federation Trust is established between an Exchange organization and MFG by exchanging the organization’s certificate with MFG, and retrieving MFG’s certificate and federation metadata. The certificate is used for encrypting tokens Q.What is Sharing Policy? Ans: Sharing policies allow you to control how users in your organization can share calendar and contact information with users outside the organization. To provision recipients to use a particular sharing policy Q.Prerequisites to create a Sharing Policy Ans:

  • A federation trust has been created between your Exchange 2010 organization and Microsoft Federation Gateway, and the Federated Organization Identifier is configured.
  • Although you can create a sharing policy for any external domain, recipients from the specified domain can access your users’ information only if they have a mailbox in an

Exchange 2010 organization and their domain is federated Q.Why Archive? Ans:

  1. Growing E-Mail Volume – everyone wants to have more E-mail because of this the storage, Backup disk should be increases
  2. Performance and storage issue – increase in Storage costs
  3. Mailbox quota – users are forced to manage quota
  4. PSTs – quota management often results in growing PSTs – outlook Auto Archive
  5. Discovery and Compliance issues – PSTs difficult to discovery centrally, regulatory retention schedules contribute to further volume/storage issues

Q.How Archiving improved in Exchange Server 2010? Ans: Archiving improved by providing larger mailbox architecture, simple migration of PSTs back to server, discovery options, retention policies and legal hold. Large mailbox Architecture – maintains performance and provides option for DAS-SATA storage to reduce costs Archiving enables simple migration of PSTs back to server. If the archiving option sin enabled for a user, a new Mailbox will be created to the user name archive in which the user can set retention policies to move the mails to archive mailbox or the admin can set retention policies for the user mailbox. Archiving simplifies discovery, retention and legal hold Q.What are the archiving options introduced in Exchange Server 2010? Ans:

  1. Personal Archive – secondary Mailbox Node, they are the PST files of primary Mailbox
  2. Retention Policies – folder/item level and archive/delete policies
  3. Multi-Mailbox search – Role based GUI, admin can assign this permission to legal team
  4. Legal Hold – monitor or control a user from delete a mail by legal hold and searchable with Multi Mailbox Search
  5. Journaling – Journal de-duplication (unwanted journaling on distributed mails). One copy of journal per database and
  6. Journal decryption – HT role will do the decryption and send the decrypted copy for journalin

Q.What is personal archive in Exchange Server 2010 archiving? Ans:  It is a Secondary mailbox that is configured by the administrator, this appears along with user’s primary mailbox in outlook or OWA, and the PST files can be dragged and dropped to personal archive Mailbox. Mails in Primary mailbox can be moved automatically using Retention policies. Archive quota can be set separately from primary mailbox Q.What are retention policies? And what we can do with retention policies in Exchange Server 2010? Ans: Retention policy is an option to move/ delete certain mails by applying rules. We can set retention policies at Item or Folder level. Policies can be applied directly within e-mail. We can set expiration date stamped directly on e-mail. Policies can be applied to all email within a folder. We can configure delete policy to delete the mail after certain period and Archive policies to move certain mails with the certain period to archive mailbox Q.What are the Retention Policies in Exchange Server 2010? Ans:

  1. Move Policy – automatically moves messages to the messages to the archive Mailbox with the options of 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and never – 2 years is default. Move mailbox policies helps keep mailbox under quota. This works like outlook Auto Archive without creating PSTs
  2. Delete Policy – automatically deletes messages. Delete policies are global. Removes unwanted items
  3. Move + Delete policy – automatically moves messages to archive after X months and deletes from archive after Y Months. We can set policy priority: Explicit policies over default policies; longer policies apply over shorted policies

Q.What is Multi Mailbox Search? Ans:  This option delegated access to search to HR, compliance, legal manager. Administrator has to provide access permission on to use this feature, this will provide an option to search all mail items ( email, IM contacts, calendar) across primary mailbox, archives. The filtering option in Multi Mailbox search includes sender, receiver, expire policy, message size, send/receive date, cc/bcc, regular expressions, IRM protected Items Q.What are E-Discovery features? Ans:  Following are the E-Discovery features introduced in Exchange Server 2010

  1. Search specific Mailboxes or DLS
  2. Export search results to a mailbox or SMTP Address
  3. Request email alert when search completes
  4. Search results organized by per original hierarchy

Lot more will be added in the original release Q.What is Legal Hold and what are the features in Legal Hold? New feature in Exchange Server 2010 to monitor or control a user from deleting a Mail or Mailbox, the features available in Legal Hold are

  1. Copy edited and deleted item – this option is in Exchange server 2007 to hold the auto deleted items
  2. Set duration for auto delete – indefinite or specify time period
  3. Auto alert notification – sends alerts to users that they are on hold, eliminates manual process
  4. Search dumpster – use multi mailbox search to retrieve deleted/edited items indexed in dumpster folder

Q.What is journaling and what are the journaling features in Exchange Server 2010? Ans:  Journaling is an option to track mails from particular user or from a group of users. The New Features in Journaling for Exchange server 2010 are

  1. Transport Journaling – ability to journal individual Mailboxes or SMTP address and also this gives a detailed report per To/Cc//Bcc/Alt-Recipient and DL expansion
  2. Journal report de duplication – reduces duplication of journal reports. Exchange server 2010 creates one report per message

Q.What is journal decryption? Ans: Journal decryption is a new feature in Exchange Server 2010, if a user sends an encrypted message to recipient and if journaling was enabled for that user, then the Hub transport Server decrypts the message and sends that decrypted message for journaling. The intended recipient will receive the encrypted message Q.What is Set Quota in Archive management? Ans: With Mailbox quota Management, we can assign mailbox size for a user. This option can be enabled from the properties of the user account, and the default settings to Mailbox quota is 10 GB Q.What is universal Inbox In OWA? Ans: Its provides a solution to have one E-Mail inbox for E—Mail, Text messages and Voice messages Can have multiple E-Mail accounts in one OWA window Q.What is federation? Ans: Federation is new feature in Exchange server 2010 to share the company users calendars to the partners. A trust relationship to be made to have this feature Q.What is continuous availability feature in Exchange Server 2010? Ans: In Exchange Server 2007, we have server to server failover scenarios, and we need to use failover clustering to configure the HA options which is very difficult to manage In Exchange Server 2010 HA modified to Database level which provides quick recoverability in disk and database failures. We can have multiple database copies up to 16 mailbox copies in a database availability group. Admin have replicate mailbox copies up to 16 replicated copies. Capabilities of having CCR and SCR into single platform Q.Continuous availability in user level? Ans: If a mailbox move is happening, the users will be stay online and there wont be be any discontinuity in sending or receiving mails Q.Explain the administration option in Exchange Server 2010? Ans: Exchange Server 2010 provides simplified administration by providing options like Compliance office can easily search for mailboxes HR can easily update the user information Help desk can easily manage mailbox quotas User can easily track the status of the message easily User can easily create own Distribution group User can modify the contact information Q.What are the security features introduced in exchange server 2007? Ans: Edge Transport Server – placed on the Edge of the Network replaced the frontend server, functionalities includes virus and spam blocking, perform antivirus and anti-spam filtering, and route the messages internal to the organization. Hub Transport Server – replaced the bridgehead server act as a policy compliance server, TLS – includes server to server Transport Layer Security for server – server message transport with a secured manner. It’s an Encryption technology. Encryption – by default Exchange 2007 encrypts the content between exchange server 2007 and outlook 2007 client. Provides full support for certificate based PKI. Q.Name the reliable and recoverable features in Exchange server 2007? Ans: Exchange 2007 holds to copies of user information in the network with the help of reliable and recoverability features introduced. Local Continuous Replication – Two copies of user information in another drive (same server) Cluster continuous Replication – holds the replication of information across the server Single Copy Cluster – configured in SAN, DAS, and ISCSI etc. NAS not supported Snapshot Backup – supported by third party vendors Q.What is Exchange Management Shell? Ans: It is a command line utility introduced in Exchange server 2007, which provides an administrator the ability to configure, administer, and manage an Exchange 2007 server environment using text commands instead of solely a graphical user interface (GUI). Q.Name the Exchange server 2007 Roles? Ans: Edge Transport Server Role – replaced the frontend server, function as firewall Hub Transport Server Role – replaced the bridgehead server, handles message routing Client Access Server Role – introduced newly, handles the client connection Mailbox Server Role – replaced the Backend server, holds the mailbox Unified Messaging Server Role – messaging solution for mobile devices, OVA etc Q.Explain Edge Transport Role? Ans: The Edge Transport Server Role is to transfer mails from inside of your organization to the outside world. This role installed on the edge of your network (perimeter Network). Main purpose is to prevent your exchange server from all kinds of Attack. Must have ports 25 (SMTP) and 50636 (LDAPS) open from it to the hub transport server on the internal LAN. Port 25 is to send mail in. Port 50636 is to replicate the Exchange information that it needs, such as changes to users’ safe and blocked senders lists Q.Explain Hub Transport Role? Ans: The Main Purpose of the Hub Transport Server Role is to transfer the mails throughout you exchange, This server role is responsible for internal mail flow, This Server role replace the bridge head servers of Exchange server 2003. This can be used as an edge transport server in Smaller Organization. This must be the first role installed in Exchange 2007. You can install the client access server role and the mailbox server role at the same time as the hub transport role, but not before. Q.Explain Client Access Server Role? Ans: The role that handles client requests for OWA, Outlook Anywhere, ActiveSync, OVA and offline address book distribution. This role must be installed after the hub transport role and before the mailbox server role. You can install the mailbox server role at the same time as the client access role, but not before. Q.Explain Mailbox Server Role? Ans: Mailbox Server holds the Mailbox database and Public folder databases for your organization. It only retains the mailbox and it won’t transfer your mails. Transferring mails between your mailbox server are handled by Hub Transport servers. The mailbox server roles will be introduced only after the installation of Hub Transport Server and Client Access Server Roles. If we are installing Mailbox server with the clustering options Like CCR, SCC, or SCR, then no other server roles to be installed with this server role. Q.Explain Unified Messaging Server Role? Ans: Functions as the interface point for the VOIP gateway or IP-PBX phone system. This Role uses the user mailboxes to be the single point for storage and access of voice mail and fax messages, in addition to their normal email. Q.What is Exchange Active sync? Ans: ActiveSync provides for synchronized access to email from a handheld device, such as a Pocket PC or other Windows Mobile device. It allows for real-time send and receives functionality to and from the handheld, through the use of push technology. Q.What is POP3? Ans: The Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) is a legacy protocol that is supported in Exchange 2007. POP3 enables simple retrieval of mail data via applications that use the POP3 protocol. Mail messages, however, cannot be sent with POP3 and must use the SMTP engine in Exchange. By default, POP3 is not turned on and must be explicitly activated. contact for more on Exchange Server Online Training exchange server interview questions