Case Scenario Exercise

You administer the Exchange Server 2003 organization at Coho Vineyard, and your duties include maintaining and troubleshooting four Exchange Server 2003 servers. Two of these are front-end servers configured to use Network Load Balancing, and two are back-end servers. A hardware firewall is installed and the front-end servers are in the DMZ. Three Windows Server 2003 servers are configured as domain controllers. One of these servers is scheduled for replacement. All the servers at Coho use Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, but client operating systems include Microsoft Windows NT 4 Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows XP Professional.

• Requirement 1 The size of Coho's network does not, in the opinion of management, justify a recovery server. Nevertheless, management wants the reassurance that mailbox storage group restores are reliable and wants to minimize the time that mailbox stores are dismounted. Management accepts that public stores need to be dismounted to be restored. To minimize this downtime, strict limits are required for the size of public stores, and on the number of people who can add and delete public store items.

• Requirement 2 The number of users is greater than the number of client machines. Any user should be able to log on and be authenticated at any client computer.

• Requirement 3 One of the domain controllers has only 256 MB of memory. This is the computer that is scheduled for replacement, and its memory will not be upgraded. How soon the replacement occurs will depend upon how often that computer experiences problems and the severity of the problems. The chief information officer wants documentary proof of problems in that computer and wants to be informed when problems become severe.

Requirement 1

The first requirement involves minimizing the time that mailbox stores are dismounted by imposing strict limits for the size of public stores and on the number of people who can add and delete public store items.

1. You need to be able to restore mailbox stores and individual mailboxes. You do not want to restore on top of existing data in case restore errors cause the data to be lost. You do not have a recovery server. How do you solve the problem?

2. You recover a mailbox that has been corrupted. Your chief executive officer (CEO) asks if you can also recover a lost file that was in the public store. She does not want the store dismounted, and she wants to recover only the one item, not the entire store. What do you tell her?

3. You have restricted write and delete rights to the public store to a very small group and have limited the size of the store. However, users report that they are having problems finding items in public stores and that the public store hierarchy is becoming complex. What other limitation should you impose?

Requirement 2

The second requirement involves ensuring that any user is able to log on and be authenticated at any client computer.

1. A user reports that he was unable to log on and be authenticated on one of the client machines. When he tried another computer, he was required to change his password, but otherwise had no problems. What is the likely cause, and how do you confirm it?

2. NetBT is still widely used on Coho's network. What tool can you use to troubleshoot NetBIOS name resolution and obtain NetBIOS statistics?

   1. netstat

   2. nslookup

   3. ipconfig

   4. nbtstat

Requirement 3

The third requirement involves determining when the domain controller that has only 256 MB of memory should be replaced.

1. You want to be informed when the suspect domain controller is experiencing memory problems. You want a message sent to yourself and to your chief information officer, an entry written to Event Viewer, and a performance log started. What counter do you use and how should you set it up?

2. You have been asked to produce statistics that can be used to analyze the performance of the suspect domain controller over a period of time. What tool will give you the information you want in a suitable format?

   1. System Monitor

   2. The report view of a performance log

   3. The applications log in Event Viewer

   4. Diagnostic logging