Exchange Server 2010 Interview Question - Management Tools

1. What's new in Exchange Management Console?

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

2. What is Exchange Control Panel?

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

3. Who can use ECP and what are the manageable options?

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

4. What is ROLA BASED ACCESS CONTROL?

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

5. 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

6. How to delegate a Role ?

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

7. What is Remote power shell in Exchange Server 2010?

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

8. What are the supportable OS platforms to install Exchange Management console?

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

Exchange Server 2010 Interview Question - Management

1. What's new in Exchange Management Console?

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

2. What is Exchange Control Panel?

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

3. Who can use ECP and what are the manageable options?

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

4. What is ROLA BASED ACCESS CONTROL?

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

5. 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

6. How to delegate a Role ?

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

7. What is Remote power shell in Exchange Server 2010?

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

8. What are the supportable OS platforms to install Exchange Management console?

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

Exchange Server 2010 Interview Question - Management

1. What's new in Exchange Management Console?

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

2. What is Exchange Control Panel?

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

3. Who can use ECP and what are the manageable options?

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

4. What is ROLA BASED ACCESS CONTROL?

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

5. 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

6. How to delegate a Role ?

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

7. What is Remote power shell in Exchange Server 2010?

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

8. What are the supportable OS platforms to install Exchange Management console?

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

Exchange server 2010 Interview Questions – High Availability

1. What are the vision and Goals of Exchange Server 2010 high availability?

Vision – deliver a fast, easy to deploy and operate, economical solution that can provide high availability solution for exchange server

Goals –  Achieve below details

1. Deliver a high availability and site resilience that is native to exchange

2. Enables less expensive and less complex storage

3. Simplify administration and reduce support cost

4. Increase end-end availability

5. Support exchange server 2010 online

2. What are the high availability solutions introduced in Exchange Server 2010?

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

3. What are the High Availability features introduce in Exchange Server 2010?

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

4. What is high availability?

High Availability is a solution that provide data availability; service availability and automatic recover from site failures

5. What is disaster recovery?

It is a procedure used to manually a recover a failure

6. What is site resilience?

Site Resilience is a disaster recovery solution used for recovery from site failure

7. What is switch over and failover?

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

8. What are the concepts deprecated in Exchange Server 2010?

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

9. Explain new features in Exchange Server 2010 High Availability?

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

10. Give an idea on Exchange server 2007 High Availability Architecture changes?

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.

11. What is Auto Database Mount Dial in Database Availability Group?

If the Mailbox Database on a DAG is replicated to other server and if a failure occurs, an automatic recovery will occur or a manual recover needs to be performed by administrator. Auto Database Mount Dial is a predefined settings that are used when Automatic recovery occur if any failure happen to the replicated databases on a DAG.

The settings are nothing but a option that informs, how many logs can be ignored while activating a passive copy, if any failure occur to the active copy.

Default Auto Database Mount Dial Settings

1. Good Availability (Default) – 6 or fewer logs can be missing when mounting a passive copy


2. Best Availability – 12 or less logs


3. Loss less – Zero logs missing


4. Best effort – there is no specification; it will mount the passive copy. It will be used when switch over occurs

12. What are the continuous replication modes available in Database Availability Group?

There are two types of replication modes in Exchange server 2010 SP1 release

File Mode – it is the normal or default mode of continuous replication to ship the log files. Passive copy ask for the logs from the active copy by informing that I have these many logs and send me new logs if you have.

Block Mode – on the initial stage of replication, file mode will occur and once the passive copies is similar to active copy and copy queue length is zero, then block mode starts. Block level (log buffer data shipping) log shipping

13. What is a quorum?

Quorum is a cluster component and if we take a 5 node cluster, quorum is the component to ensure that only one node is active or functioning at a time

Quorum is that data that is shared between the voters, representing configuration information. It is number of voters that is required for a solution to be running

In simple: When a majority of voters can communicate with each other, the cluster has quorum

When a majority of voters cannot communicate with each other, the cluster does not have quorum

14. What are Witness, Witness Server and Alternate Witness Server?

Below are the details of Witness, witness Server and Alternate Witness Server

Witness:

A witness is a file share on a server that is external to the DAG that participates in quorum by providing a weighted vote for the DAG member that has a lock on the witness.log file. Witness is configured for all the DAG but it is used only when the DAG have the even number of members.

 Witness Server:

Witness Server is a normal server, which is external to the DAG that holds a file share having the Witness log file in that. Witness server does not maintain a full copy of quorum data and is not a member of the DAG or cluster. Witness Server should be located on the same active directory forest. There is no restriction for this server to be only a Hub Transport server.

 Alternate Witness Server:

As the name implies, the alternate witness server is not the alternate server for the existing witness server. It is the witness server used by the DAG, when a data centre switcher happened.

DAG does not have the ability to automatically switch over the alternate witness server, if the active data centre goes down. Exchange admin has to involve in activating the alternate witness server.

It will not provide redundancy for witness server or file share witness server recover.

 15. What is Active Manager? What are the types of Active Manager available?

In Exchange 2010, we don’t have the cluster model to achieve the High Availability. Active Manager is the new exchange server DAG component that manages the high availability platform. The failover and the switchover are managed by Active Manager.

Active Manager runs on every mailbox server

Active Manager holds the information of, in which server the active copy of a database is mounted and it will store this information in cluster database and it will share the same information to other active manager running on other mailbox servers in a DAG

There are 3 types of Active Manager available in Exchange 2010

1. Standalone Active Manager – AM runs on each mailbox server


2. Primary Active Manager – AM runs on the DAG that holds the cluster resource group


3. Standby Active Manager – AM runs on every other node on the DAG

Exchange Server 2010 Interview Questions - Federation

1. What is federated sharing?

Federated Sharing allows easy sharing of availability information, calendar, and contacts with recipients in external federated organizations

2. What are the options shared in federated sharing?

1. Free busy information


2. Calendar and contact sharing


3. Sharing policy

3. How federated sharing works in Exchange server 2010?

4. Explain the operation of federation?

5. What are the benefits of federation?

Allow users to act on behalf of specific user

• Specific user identified by E-mail address


• User not prompted for credentials

Reduces explicit trust management

• No AD trusts, service to cloud accounts to manage


• Minimizes certificate exchanges


• Verifies domain ownership

6. Explain the federation commands in Exchange server 2010?

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

7. How to establish federated sharing in Exchange Server 2010?

1. Create trust with certificate exchange


2. Prove domain ownership


3. Add domains

8. What is Microsoft Federation Gateway?

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

9. What is Federation Trust?

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

10. What is Sharing Policy?

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

11. Prerequisites to create a Sharing Policy

• 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

Exchange Server 2010 Interview Question - Archiving

This topic holds 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 both from the online mailbox and the archive mailbox, retention policies and legal hold polices to retain the email for business needs.

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 is 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 available on the server


2. Retention Policies – folder/item level policies 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

13. Inform some new features related to archiving in Service Pack 1?

Users primary and archive mailboxes can be located on the same or separate mailbox databases
Mailboxes can be moved together or separately
Different storage hardware
Separate Database Availability Groups can used for normal mailbox and Archive mailbox
Different backup and recovery windows

14. Do we have an option to configure Retention Policies from Exchange Management Console?

In exchange server 2010 Sp1, we  can create and manage Retention Policies in the Exchange Management Console. In Previous version this can be managed only using EMS.

Also, we have an optional retention tags available in Exchange Server 2010 Sp1.

15. what are the updates in exchange server 2010 related to Journaling?

Transport Journal: Journal achieved to individual mailboxes or SMTP address. We have an option to get a Detailed reports per To/CC/BCC/Alt-Recipient and distribution group expansion