Exchange Server 2010 Interview Questions and Answers - Archiving

This topic hold the interview questions and answers on Archiving features in Exchange Server 2010

1. Why Archive?

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

2. How Archiving improved in Exchange Server 2010?

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

3. What are the archiving options introduced in Exchange Server 2010?

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 journaling

4. What is personal archive in Exchange Server 2010 archiving?

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



5. What are retention policies? And what we can do with retention policies in Exchange Server 2010?

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

6. What are the Retention Policies in Exchange Server 2010?

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

7. What is Multi Mailbox Search?

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

8. What are E-Discovery features?

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

9. 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

10. What is journaling and what are the journaling features in Exchange Server 2010?

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

11. What is journal decryption?

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

12. What is Set Quota in Archive management?

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