Exchange 2007 Interview Questions

Lately I have come across lot of people who have been asking me interview questionnaire for Exchange 2007 and finally I created cube notes for them :-)), So if you are new to Exchange 2007 then I would say just follow the basics as first thing first:

Exchange 2007 different Roles, functions of those roles, Availability options in Exchange 2007, Mailflow etc. So Here I am sharing few of my cube notes:

The Mailflow:


Below are messaging components in Exchange 2007:
Submission Queue
Store Driver
Microsoft Exchange Mail Submission Service
Pickup Directory
Categorizer


Messages sent by a mailbox user enter the transport pipeline when they reach the sender’s outbox.

The store driver on the Hub Transport retrieves it from the user’s Outbox and then transfers it to the submission queue.

After the message has been successfully added to the submission queue, it is moved from the sender’s Outbox to the sender’s Sent Items.

MS Exchange Submission Service notifies the Hub Transport server role to pick up the message from the sender’s Outbox. If there are multiple Hub Transport server roles on one Active Directory site, the Message Exchange Mail Submission service attempts to evenly distribute notifications between each transport role using static load balancing.

Each message that is transferred to the pickup directory has been successfully submitted to the submission queue via the categorizer. Messages placed in the Pickup Directory must be in the appropriate format and have read/write permissions configured.

The categorizer always picks the oldest message from the Submission queue and checks whether this message has to be routed internally in the Exchange organization or externally alongwith the others tasks like DL Expansion, message format conversion etc.

External Message are routed to Edge Transport and internal are routed as per the information of the intended recipients.

Availability Options in Exchange 2007


Local Continuous Replication: Where the Database copy is maintained on the same server. No Server level redundancy.

Cluster Continuous Replication: Cluster is created for Active and Passive nodes. Copy of storage group and database happens through log shipping on second server in a failover cluster. Like

Database1 on Node1 will be copied over to Node2
Microsoft Exchange Replication Service will do the log shipping and replay.

Standby Continuous Replication: It is site-resilency solution for Exchange Servers and their databases.

Q. How does the OAB distribution happens in Exchange 2007?

Ans. The Exchange System Attendant service is responsible for the generation of oab. This service is available only on a server that has the mailbox role installed. The SA invokes a dll file called oabgen.dll.

The oab files are stored in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ExchangeOAB. This folder is shared so that it can be replicated to the CAS server for web distribution.

The oab generation server opens the oab folders and updates the file. The oabgen.dll file is responsible for connecting to the public folder.

CAS server runs a service named Microsoft Exchange File Distribution Service which copies the oab files from the mailbox server (ExchangeOAB folder) to the web distribution point in the CAS server.

The web distribution folder is a folder on CAS Server where the copied oab files are placed. The default location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\OAB.

The web distribution point is updated once in 8 hours. If you want to force an oab update, restart the Exchange File Distribution Service.

Q. Is it recommended to install CAS server in perimeter network? Why?

Ans. No. Security and availability of AD attributes are two main reasons.

Q. How is the performance of Exchange 2007 better than Exchange 2003?

Ans. In Exchange 2003, the database read to write ratio was typically 2:1 or 66 percent reads. With Exchange 2007, the larger database cache decreases the number of reads to the database on disk causing the reads to shrink as a percentage of total I/O.

In Exchange 2003, a transaction log for a storage group requires roughly 10 percent as many I/Os as the databases in the storage group. For example, if the database LUN is using 1000 I/Os, the log LUN would use approximately 100 I/Os. With the reduction in database reads in Exchange 2007, combined with the smaller log file size and the ability to have more storage groups, the log-to-database write ratio is roughly 1:2. For example, if the database LUN is consuming 500 write I/Os, the log LUN will consume approximately 250 write I/Os.

Q. What is Transport Dumpster?

Ans. The transport dumpster submits recently delivered mail after an unscheduled outage MaxDumpsterSizePerStorageGroup: 1.5 times the size of the max msg that can be sent MaxDumpsterTime: How long the email can stay in the transport dumpster queue 7.00:00:00 means 7 days

Q. What is Back-Pressure?

Ans. The settings for back-pressure can be configure on Hub Transport and Edge Server. If utilization of a system resource exceeds the specified limit, the Exchange server stops accepting new connections and messages. This prevents the system resources from being completely overwhelmed and enables the Exchange server to deliver the existing messages.

Q. Exchange 2007 main Services:

Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology
Microsoft Exchange Monitoring
Microsoft Exchange IMAP4
Microsoft Exchange POP3
Microsoft Exchange Transport Log Search
Microsoft Exchange Transport: On Hub and Edge
Microsoft Exchange Service Host
Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer
Microsoft Exchange Replication Service
Microsoft Exchange Mail Submission
Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Assistants
Microsoft Exchange File Distribution: On CAS Server
Microsoft Exchange Information Store
Microsoft Exchange System Attendant
Microsoft Exchange EdgeSync: on Hub Transport Server
Microsoft Exchange Anti-spam Update

And then heading towards troubleshooting can include any sort of questions like:

Q. Reasons for slow delivery of emails?
Q. Troubleshooting steps when emails are stuck into the queue?
Q. Logs are not getting shipped on the other node
Q. OWA/OMA/Activesync is not working
Q. OOF is not getting published
Q. OAB is not getting generated on clustered mailboxes

And these questions have no end !! :))