Questions and Answers | MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-284): Implementing and Managing MicrosoftВ® Exchange Server 2003 (Pro-Certification)

Lesson 1 Review

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1.	You are the Exchange Server administrator for Contoso, Ltd. You have just finished creating a new mailbox-enabled user for a new employee named Jenny who will start work next week, but shortly after you are done, you realize that you put the mailbox on the wrong server. You open Exchange System Manager and navigate to the Mailboxes folder on the server that currently holds her mailbox but find that the mailbox is not listed, even after refreshing the view. You check the mailbox store on the other server and it is not there either. Why might this be happening?
2.	You are an Exchange Server administrator responsible for 25 servers running Exchange Server 2003, Standard Edition, and approximately 10,000 mailboxes contained within a single administrative group. Several of your servers are close to the 16 GB mailbox store limit, and rather than incur the expense of upgrading to Exchange Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, management has approved implementing storage limits on mailboxes across the board. What is the most efficient approach to configuring storage limits for this environment?
3.	The CEO of your company calls you and informs you that she is going out of town for two weeks and needs to have her assistant check her e-mail while she is gone. However, she doesn't want the assistant to be able to access e-mail that is already in the mailbox because it contains confidential information. What is the best way to set it up so the assistant can check the CEO's e-mail while she is out of town?
4.	You configure the assistant's address as the forwarding address for the CEO's mailbox, and when the CEO leaves town, e-mail addressed to her goes to the assistant, as planned. However, when the CEO returns from her trip, she is dismayed to find that she has not received any e-mail since she left. What happened?
5.	You are the Exchange Server administrator for Contoso, Ltd. You have been asked to create a distribution group for a new interdepartmental task force that is being created for special projects. The members of the group are likely to change frequently depending on the project. What type of group should you create so that ongoing administration is as easy as possible? A security group A distribution group A query-based distribution group A universal group

Answers

1.	A mailbox must be initialized before it will display in the Mailboxes folder. One way the mailbox can be initialized is when the user logs in to it the first time, such as through Outlook. However, in this case, the user doesn't start work until the following week, so the mailbox hasn't been used. The quickest way to initialize the mailbox is to send a message to it from your own account. Once you do this and refresh the view, you will be able to see the mailbox in Exchange System Manager. Alternatively, you would still be able to use the Exchange Task Wizard from the user's account in Active Directory Users And Computers to move the mailbox, even if the mailbox has not been initialized.
2.	There are two levels at which you can configure storage limits: the individual mailbox level and the mailbox store level. The prospect of configuring limits on 10,000 individual mailboxes is daunting and highly impractical (it could take weeks to complete). The best option is to configure limits at the mailbox store level. There are two ways to accomplish this. You could edit the mailbox store on each server and configure the settings. With 25 servers, this would involve performing the configuration steps 25 times, which would likely take several hours. Or, you could use a mailbox store policy, which allows you to configure the settings a single time and add all of the servers and mailbox stores to the administrative group that the policy should apply to. Using this method, you could accomplish the task at hand in less than five minutes.
3.	In this situation, you should configure the CEO's mailbox to forward to the assistant while she is out of town. This way, the assistant will receive the e-mail that arrives during the CEO's absence without being able to access other items in the mailbox.
4.	You forgot to select the option to Deliver Messages To Both Forwarding Address And Mailbox. As a result, all new e-mails were forwarded to the assistant, but they were not delivered to the CEO's mailbox. Unfortunately, all you can do at this point is to have the assistant manually forward all the CEO's e-mail between the time she left and the time she returned to her mailbox.
5.	The correct answer is c.

Lesson 2 Review

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You are the Exchange Server administrator for Contoso, Ltd. Because of the high level of interactivity between the Sales group and Contoso's customer base, executive management is concerned that if e-mail went down, it would take too long to get the Sales staff back online. The CIO researches Exchange Server 2003 and asks you about segregating the e-mail for Sales into its own group outside the general mailbox store so that Sales could be restored first in case of a disaster recover. He also does not want Sales to have the mailbox limits that everyone else has. Furthermore, whereas the general mailbox store is backed up nightly, the CIO wants the Sales group e-mail to be backed up twice a day in order to minimize potential data loss. How would you meet these requirements?

You are a network administrator who has been asked to define the specifications for a new server running Exchange Server 2003 that will be purchased to replace an existing server. The server will host three storage groups that each contain 2 to 5 databases, as follows:

Storage Group	Database
General	General Mailbox Store
	General Public Store
Executive	Executive Mailbox Store
	Executive Public Store
Support	SysAdm Mailbox Store
	Development Mailbox Store
	HelpDesk Mailbox Store
	Engineering Mailbox Store
	Support Public Store

Because of the existing server's previous reliability problems, you have been told that cost is not a consideration and that performance and reliability are the deciding factors. Design a disk configuration for the new server that will maximize the performance and reliability of the new server, as well as give the best flexibility in administering information stores.

You are the network and Exchange Server administrator for a small company that uses Exchange Server 2003. The server running Exchange Server 2003 has only two hard disks, so you have moved the single storage group and its two databases to the second disk (D), leaving the transaction logs on C. Your company does most of its communication with customers and clients by e-mail. After about six months, you occasionally run into a problem where the Information Store service shuts down toward the end of the day. This usually happens on days when one or more mass e-mails have been sent to customers. You find that after the nightly full backup runs, you are able to restart the Information Store service successfully. Management is concerned about the Exchange server going down too often and wants to know what the problem is and how you can fix it.

Answers

In order to meet the requirements, you need to create a new storage group and place the new mailbox store inside this storage group. The primary reason for this is that backup schedules are set at the storage group level, not at the individual database level. As a result, the only way to configure a different backup schedule for Sales is for it to have its own storage group. Mailbox limits can be set at the mailbox store level, so limits would not force a decision either way, and neither would the need to restore the Sales mailbox store prior to restoring the general mailbox store.

Since cost is not a factor, you have the ability to use the best configuration possible for your new server. This involves having a mirrored system partition that holds the operating system and Exchange Server 2003 binaries, a mirrored disk partition for each storage group's transaction logs, and a RAID-5 disk partition for each storage group's databases. A possible disk configuration would look like the following:

C — mirrored partition (operating system and Exchange Server 2003)

D — CD-ROM drive

E — mirrored partition (General storage group's transaction logs)

F — mirrored partition (Executive storage group's transaction logs)

G — mirrored partition (Support storage group's transaction logs)

H — RAID-5 partition (General Mailbox Store and General Public Store )

I — RAID-5 partition (Executive Mailbox Store and Executive Public Store)

J — RAID-5 partition (SysAdm Mailbox Store, HelpDesk Mailbox Store, and Support Public Store)

K — RAID-5 partition (Engineering Mailbox Store and Development Mailbox Store)

This type of configuration would provide a great level of performance, administrative flexibility, and reliability.

The Information Store service shuts down automatically when the partition that holds the transaction logs fills up. Each transaction log is 5 MB in size, and a new one is created whenever the 5 MB limit is reached. In this situation, where e-mail is being used extensively and mass emails are being sent, it is likely that the C partition is not large enough for Exchange Server 2003. As a result, the partition is filling up with log files throughout the day, culminating with the Information Store service stopping when the partition reaches capacity.

When a full backup is run, it purges the transaction logs, so the disk space is returned. This is why the Information Store service is able to restart and Exchange Server 2003 works again.

The best solution would be to add at least one new disk to the server and move the transaction logs to the new drive. This would alleviate the problem. An alternative would be to enable circular logging on the storage group. This would result in the same transaction log set being reused rather than a new log file being created every 5 MB. Since full backups are being run nightly, this would be possible because you can't perform incremental or differential backups when circular logging is enabled. The caveat to this solution is that you will only be able to restore a database back to the last full backup; any data created during the time between the backup and the failure would be lost.

Lesson 3 Review

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You are the Exchange Server administrator for Contoso, Ltd. The vice president of Sales calls you with some changes to the Sales address list that he wants to be made immediately. You make the changes and e-mail him confirmation that the changes have been made. A few minutes later, he calls you back and is upset because he doesn't see any difference in the Sales address list. Why can't he see the changes, and what can you do to correct the problem as quickly as possible?

You are the Exchange Server administrator for Fabrikam, Inc. The CIO calls you and asks you to set up an address list for a special internal auditing task force the company is putting together. Since the list membership is sensitive, management does not want the user community to be able to view the list membership and ideally not even be able to see that the list exists. You create the address list and are now editing the security settings for the list. How should you configure the security settings to meet the requirements of management?

You are the Exchange Server administrator for Contoso, Ltd., a company that uses offline address lists to support a mobile sales staff and an executive management team that travels extensively between office locations. Separate address lists exist for Executive Management and for Sales, among other lists, and both are made available offline in the Mobile Offline Address List that you have created. Company policy is that no one except executive management has access to their address list, and you have configured the security settings on the Executive Address List so that only the Executive security group can view and use the list.

One afternoon, you receive a call from the CEO. She is at a remote site working on a large proposal with a member of the Sales team, and she saw that when the salesperson went to e-mail the proposal, he was able to see the Executive Address List. Also, when the salesperson left the room, the CEO attempted to pull up the Executive Address List on the salesperson's laptop and was able to do so. She is upset that people are able to access this address list despite a company policy against it, and she wants to know what you are going to do to fix the problem immediately. Why can the salesperson access the list, and what can you do to fix the problem?

Answers

1.	The Recipient Update Service is responsible for updating Active Directory with changes that are made to address lists. If the Recipient Update Service is set to run on a schedule rather than set to Always Run, changes will not be reflected until the next maintenance interval. However, you can force an immediate update by right-clicking the Recipient Update Service in the domain that contains the vice president's user account and clicking either Update Now or Rebuild. The former will update the changes in the address lists, while the latter will completely rebuild the address lists based on the LDAP queries.
2.	You would first configure a security group for the task force and for the executive management team, if one did not already exist. Next, right-click the address list in Exchange System Manager, click Properties, and then click the Security tab. Add the security groups for the task force and the executive team to the list of users and groups with permissions, and configure them to have the same permissions as the Authenticated Users group. Finish configuring the permissions by removing the Everyone, Authenticated Users, and Anonymous Logon groups from the list.
3.	Once an offline address list is downloaded, the security settings no longer apply. So, if a user has permission to download an address list and part of an offline address list, they will be able to access the address list offline, even if they do not have permission to it online. Therefore, the solution in this situation is to not include both address lists as part of the same offline address list. You could create a separate mailbox store for the Executive group and assign an offline address list to that mailbox store that included all the address lists, including the Executive Address List. Then, in the offline address list that was assigned to the mailbox store containing the Sales group, remove the Executive Address List from the list of Address Lists.

Case Scenario Exercise: Requirement 1

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1.	In order to meet management's backup and restore requirements, what part of the current server configuration must be upgraded or reconfigured? Windows Server 2003 Exchange Server 2003 The C partition The D partition
2.	In order to meet the backup and restore requirements, describe how you would reconfigure the storage groups.
3.	Describe the disk configuration for the server that would allow for the optimal level of performance and reliability.
4.	Explain why the backup and restore process is not working as intended and what you can do to correct it.

Answers

1.	The correct answer is b. Exchange Server 2003, Standard Edition, supports only a single storage group with one mailbox store and one public store. In addition, the size of the mailbox store database cannot exceed 16 GB. To meet the requirements, you will need to first upgrade to Exchange Server 2003, Enterprise Edition. Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition, supports all of the requirements for this scenario; you do not need Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, in order to run Exchange Server 2003, Enterprise Edition.
2.	Because management wants a different backup schedule for the Sales and Executive groups than for everyone else, you will need to place them in a separate storage group. Backup schedules are set at the storage group level rather than at the mailbox store level, so simply creating additional mailbox stores in the same storage group will not work. Since the Executive and Sales groups will have the same backup schedule, you can create one storage group for both of them and create two mailbox stores in the new storage group.
3.	In this scenario, you want to completely reconfigure the disks. For best performance and reliability, mirror the C partition, using two of the 18.2-GB disks in the process. Then install Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, on this mirrored partition. The next step would be to use four more of the disks to create two mirrored partitions: D and E. On these partitions, you will later place the transaction logs for the Executive and Sales storage groups, and the General storage group. With the last six disks, create two RAID-5 partitions: F and G (each consisting of three disks). On these partitions, you will later place the database files for the Executive and Sales mailbox stores (F), and the General mailbox store (G). This will not be completely ideal since in a perfect world you would be able to put the Executive and Sales mailbox stores on their own individual partitions. However, with the number of disks you have in this situation, this configuration is the best choice.
4.	Circular logging had been enabled on the mailbox store in order to conserve disk space on the 18.2-GB C partition, which was near capacity with a 15-GB database, over 1 GB for Windows Server 2003, plus other files and folders. A limitation of circular logging is that incremental and differential backups do not work; only full backups can be run. As a result, the only good backup of Exchange in a week was the Friday full backup. Therefore, whenever they had to restore, they could only recover back to the previous Friday. The two options here are to change the backup schedule so that full backups are always done (no differentials) or to disable circular logging. With the new disk configuration, disk space will not be the issue it was previously, so disabling circular logging is the better choice.

Case Scenario Exercise: Requirement 2

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Of the 1000 users in the Fabrikam organization, 250 are sales and marketing users. How would you configure the same storage limits for each of the sales and marketing users as efficiently as possible?

Answers

Storage limits can be configured in one of three ways: by mailbox store policy, at the individual mailbox store level, or at the individual user level. In this situation, there is already a mailbox store for the Sales group, but there is not one for the Marketing group. It would still be much more efficient to create a mailbox store for Marketing and move everyone in the marketing department into the new mailbox store. Since the Marketing group does not need the same backup schedule as the Executive and Sales groups, you can create Marketing's mailbox store in the general First Storage Group.

To identify all of the marketing users quickly, use the Find command against the Users container in Active Directory Users And Computers to find every user account that has their Department attribute set to Marketing. Then, use the Exchange Task Wizard to move all the mailboxes to the new Marketing mailbox store.

By default, there are no storage limits on a mailbox store, so the Sales and Marketing groups do not have limits. Neither does the Executive Mailbox Store, which is supposed to have the same limits as the default Mailbox Store that contains all other users. Create a mailbox store policy in Exchange System Manager by right-clicking the System Policies container in the First Administrative Group, pointing to New, and clicking Mailbox Store Policy. Configure the Limits page to reflect a 50-MB warning limit and a 100-MB "cannot send" limit. Add the Mailbox Store and Executive Mailbox Store to the policy. This will override the existing limit policies on both mailbox stores.

Case Scenario Exercise: Requirement 3

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1.	Describe the process that you will use to create the required address lists.
2.	There is an existing Executive distribution group in the Exchange organization, and it is configured not to allow anyone except members of the Executive group to send e-mail to it. Management does not want users to be able to use the Executive Address List to circumvent the restriction. How do you prevent users from accessing it?

Answers

Exchange System Manager is used to create and modify address lists. Expand the Recipients container, right-click All Address Lists, point to New, and then click Address List. After naming the address list, click Filter Rules to configure the LDAP query that will define the list membership. You can use the Find Exchange Recipients dialog box to find users based on their department, which is most appropriate for this situation. Then repeat the process for each list that needs to be created.

By default, all users can access all address lists. However, when necessary, you can set the permissions on an address list to control access to it. This is done by right-clicking the address list, clicking Properties, and then clicking the Security tab. In this situation, add the Executive security group to the permissions list and grant the group the same permissions currently held by the Authenticated Users group. Then remove the Everyone, Anonymous Logon, and Authenticated Users groups from the list of users and groups with permissions.