Exchange Server 2013

1. What is Exchange Server 2013?

Ans- Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed
by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. Versions
4.0 and 5.0 came bundled with an email client called Microsoft Exchange Client. It
was discontinued in favor of Microsoft Outlook.

2. What are the edition of Exchange Server 2013?

Ans- There are 2 editions of exchange server 2013

a) Standard Edition
b) Enterprise Edition

3. What are the new features in Exchange server 2013?

Ans- Following are the new features in Exchange Server 2013

a) OWA offline support

b) Site Mailboxes
c) Optimized for Desktop, Slate and Phone browsers UI layouts in OWA
d) Integration with Lync and SharePoint

4. What are the Exchange Server 2013 Roles?

 a) Ans-Client Access server- The client access server (CAS) is a server role that
handles all client connections to Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange 2013.
The CAS supports all client connections to Exchange Server from Microsoft
Outlook and Outlook Web App, as well as ActiveSync applications.
b) Mailbox server- Mailbox servers host the databases that contain mailbox
and public folder data. Mailbox server role can be made highly available by
configuring a Database Availability Group.
c) Edge Transport server- Message protection and security are handled by
various agents that run on the edge transport server and act on email
messages as they are processed. The edge transport server was
discontinued as a server role in the Exchange Server 2013 release.

5. Where Exchange Server stores the exchange related information in Active

Directory?

Ans- Exchange Server stores the Exchange related information in Active Directory
partitions, following are the details.
Domain Partition: Mail enable recipient, groups and contact related to domain
level are stored.
Configuration Partition: Stores the Exchange configuration information like,
policies, global settings, address list, connecters and it contains the information
related to forest level.
Schema Partition: stores the Exchange specific classes and attributes.

6. What are prerequisites to install Exchange Server 2013?

Ans-

7. What is Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online?

Ans- Microsoft's Office 365 suite includes Exchange Online, which is a hosted
messaging application that provides organizations with access to the full-featured
version of Exchange Server. It includes access to email, calendars, contacts and
tasks for any endpoint device.

8. What is Auto discover and Availability Service in Exchange ?

 Ans- Exchange Auto discover is a web service that helps Microsoft Exchange
administrators to configure user profile settings for clients running Outlook 2007,
Outlook 2010, or Outlook 2013 and mobile phones running Windows Mobile 6.1
or later.

The Exchange 2013 Availability service makes free/busy information available to

Outlook and Outlook on the web clients. The Availability service improves
information workers' calendaring and meeting scheduling experience by providing
secure, consistent, and up-to-date free/busy information.

9. What is MX record ?

Ans- A Mail Exchanger record (MX record) is a type of certified and verified
resource record in the Domain Name System that specifies a mail
server responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of a recipient's
domain, and a preference value used to prioritize mail delivery if multiple mail
servers are available.

10. What is Mailbox Database?

Ans- A mailbox database is a unit of granularity where mailboxes are created and
stored. A mailbox database is stored as an Exchange database (.edb) file. In
Exchange 2013, each mailbox database has its own properties that you can
configure.

11. What is Database portability in Exchange Server 2013?

Ans- Database portability is a feature that enables a Microsoft Exchange Server

2013 mailbox database to be moved to or mounted on any other Mailbox server
in the same organization running Exchange 2013 that has databases with the
same database schema version.

12. What is DAG in Exchange Server 2013?

Ans- A database availability group (DAG) is a high availability (HA) and data
recovery feature of Exchange Server 2013. A database availability group,
 which can consist of multiple Exchange mailbox servers, automates recovery
at the database-level after a database, server or network failure.

13. What is witness Server?

Ans- The Witness Server can be defined as the addition server, which is not the
member of the DAG and stores the Active copy of the Database. It acts as an
observer and guarantees that Quorum is preserved in the Cluster.

14. What is Public Folder in Exchange?

Ans- Public folders are a feature of Microsoft Exchange that are used to share
information with others within your organization. Public folder administrators can
set privileges for users to access a folder, or the folder can be made available to
everyone within your organization.

15. What is Activesync?

Ans- Exchange ActiveSync is a protocol which allows mobile devices to

synchronize data with Exchange mailboxes. Synchronizing is a process of
reconciling data between a device and the appropriate Exchange mailbox. The
protocol synchronizes your mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks over the air
with Microsoft Exchange Server.

16. What is retention policy ?

Ans- Retention Policies contain Retention Tags, which are settings you can use to
specify when a message should be automatically moved to the archive or when it
should be deleted. A Retention Policy Tag (RPT) is a type of retention tag that you
can apply to default folders in a mailbox, such as Inbox and Deleted Items.

17. What are Accepted Domain and Remote Domain?

Ans-

Accepted Domain- An Accepted Domain is any SMTP namespace for which a

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 organization sends or receives email. Accepted
 domains include those domains for which the Exchange organization is
authoritative.

Remote Domain- A Remote Domains is used to control various aspects of

messages sent to recipients in domains that are external to the local Exchange
organization.

18. What are the type of mailbox can be created in Exchange server 2013?

Ans- Following type of mailbox can be created in Exchange server 2013

a) User Mailbox
b) Shared Mailbox
c) Room Mailbox
d) Equipment Mailbox
e) Linked Mailbox

19. ?

Ans- Flexible single master operation (FSMO) is a Microsoft Active Directory

feature that is a specialized domain controller task used when standard data
transfer and update methods are inadequate. Tasks that do not suit multimaster
replication are only viable as flexible single-master operations. Following are the
FSMO roles in Active Directory

a) Schema Master
b) Domain-Naming-Master
c) Infrastructure Master
d) RID Master
e) PDC Emulator

20. What is site?

Ans- Sites in Active Directory represent the physical structure, or topology, of

your network. Active Directory uses topology information, stored
as site and site link objects in the directory, to build the most efficient replication
topology.
21. What is OU?

Ans- An Organizational Unit (OU) is a container within a Microsoft Active

Directory domain which can hold users, groups and computers. It is the smallest
unit to which an administrator can assign Group Policy settings or account
permissions.

22. What are Fine-Grained Passwords?

Ans- Fine-Grained password policies are use to specify multiple password

policies in a single domain and apply different restrictions for password and
account lockout policies to different sets of users in a domain.

23. What is NTDSUTIL?

Ans- Ntdsutil.exe is a command-line tool for accessing and managing a Windows

Active Directory (AD) database.

24. What are RODCs?

Ans- RODC is a new domain controller (DC) launched with Windows Server 2008.
It lets you store an Active Directory (AD) domain database read-only copy on the
DC.

25. What is Additional Domain Controller (ADC)?

Ans- An Additional Domain Controller is required for services redundancy and

for domain authentication improvement in remote Site. Additional Domain
Controllers avoid business discontinuity in case of server failure for the
primary Domain Controller.

26. What is Child Domain Controller?

Ans- A child domain is another domain under a parent one in an active directory
domain hierarchy. A child domain under a parent first root domain form a Tree.
All Trees exists within a Forest, a forest is the security boundary.
27. What is DNS Server?

Ans- DNS Server is used to resolve FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) in to IP
address and vice versa.

28. What is the post number of DNS?

Ans- The port number of DNS is 53.

29. What is forward lookup?

Ans- Forward lookup is used to resolve FQDN name into IP address.

30. What is reverse lookup?

Ans- Reverse lookup is used to map IP address into FQDN name.

31. What is resource record?

Ans- It is a record provides the information about the recourses available in

network infrastructure.

32. What are Primary, Secondary, Stub and AD integrated zones?

Primary Zone- DNS server hosts is a primary zone and it stores the master copy
of zone data in a local file or in AD DS

Secondary Zone: Secondary zone is merely a copy of a primary zone that is

hosted on another server, it cannot be stored in AD DS.

Stub Zone: A stub zone contains the list of authoritative DNS servers for
a zone (domain) and host records that contain their IP addresses (known as glue
records). It also contains the IP address of at least one master server for the zone.

Active Directory Integrated Zones- Active Directory integrated zone data is stored
as an Active Directory object and is replicated as part of domain replication. This
has the following advantages:
 a) No single point of failure
b) Fault tolerance
c) Single replication topology
d) Secure dynamic updates

33. What is the purpose of SRV records?

Ans- SRV records are used in locating host that provides certain network services.

34. What is SOA?

Ans- Start of Authority record (abbreviated as SOA record) is a type of resource

record in the Domain Name System (DNS) containing administrative information
about the zone, especially regarding zone transfers.

35. What is cache only DNS?

Ans- Caching-only DNS servers don't actually host any zones and are not
authoritative for any domains but rather just cache results from queries asked
them by clients. If a client asks it to resolve.

36. What is DNS Forwarder?

Ans- A forwarder is a Domain Name System (DNS) server on a network used to

forward DNS queries for external DNS names to DNS servers outside of that
network. You can also forward queries according to specific domain names using
conditional forwarders.

37. What is DDNS?

Ans- Dynamic DNS is a method of automatically updating a name server in

the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DDNS
configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.

38. What is a query and what are the types of query?

Ans- A request made by a DNS client to provide name server information is called
a query. There are 2 types of DNS query
 Iterative Query
An iterative name query is one in which a DNS client allows the DNS server to
return the best answer it can give based on its cache or zone data. If the queried
DNS server does not have an exact match for the queried name, the best possible
information it can return is a referral.

Recursive Query
In Recursive name query, the DNS client requires that the DNS server respond to
the client with either the requested resource record or an error message i.e. the
record or domain name doesn’t exist.

39. What is DHCP?

Ans- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network protocol that

enables a server to automatically assign an IP address to a computer from a
defined range.

40. What is the DHCP Client/Server process?

Ans-

a) The client computer sends a broadcast request (called a DISCOVER or

DHCPDISCOVER), looking for a DHCP server to answer.
b) The router directs the DISCOVER packet to the correct DHCP server.
c) The server receives the DISCOVER packet. Based on availability and usage
policies set on the server, the server determines an appropriate address (if
any) to give to the client. The server then temporarily reserves that address
for the client and sends back to the client an OFFER (or DHCPOFFER)
packet, with that address information. The server also configures the
client’s DNS servers, WINS servers, NTP servers, and sometimes other
services as well.
d) The client sends a REQUEST (or DHCPREQUEST) packet, letting the server
know that it intends to use the address.
e) The server sends an ACK (or DHCPACK) packet, confirming that the client
has a been given a lease on the address for a server-specified period of
time.
41. What is DHCP Scope?

Ans- DHCP scopes are used to define ranges of addresses from which a DHCP
server can assign IP addresses to clients.

42. What are the DHCP Port number?

Ans- Requests are on UDP port 68, Server replies on UDP 67 .

43. What is DHCP Scope?

Ans- A DHCP scope is a valid range of IP addresses that are available for
assignment or lease to client computers on a particular subnet.

44. What is Multi scope?

Ans- A superscope allows a DHCP server to provide leases from more than
one scope to clients on a single physical network.

45. What is reservation in DHCP?

Ans- DHCP reservation is a feature in the DHCP server that allows

the DHCP administrators to reserve one or more IP addresses for particular
mission-critical computers only.

46. What is exclusion?

Ans- An exclusion removes an IP address or range of IP addresses from the pool

of addresses that are given out by the DHCP server. The server will not give out
excluded addresses.

47. What is DHCP lease?

Ans- A DHCP lease is the amount of time that the DHCP server grants to the DHCP
client permission to use a particular IP address. A typical server allows its
administrator to set the lease time.

48. What is DHCP Failover Clustering?

 Ans- A failover cluster is a group of servers that work together to maintain high
availability of applications and services. If one of the servers, or nodes, fails,
another node in the cluster can take over its workload without any downtime
(this process is known as failover).

49. What is DHCP Relay Agent?

Ans- A DHCP relay agent is any host that forwards DHCP packets between clients
and servers. Relay agents are used to forward requests and replies between
clients and servers when they are not on the same physical subnet.

50. What is Hyper-V?

Ans- Hyper-V is Microsoft's virtualization platform, or 'hypervisor', which enables

administrators to make better use of their hardware by virtualzing multiple
operating systems to run off the same physical server simultaneously.

51. What are the type of network in Hyper-V?

Ans- There are three type of networks in Hyper-V

a) Private Virtual Network:- This type of switch is bound to the physical
network cards located in the host.
b) Internal Virtual Network:- This switch is not bound to a physical network
card so only allows traffic between VMs and the host.
c) External Virtual Network:- This type of switch is only used for virtual
machines to communicate with each other.

52. What is Virtual Machine Snapshots?

Ans- A Virtual Machine snapshot is a copy of the virtual machine's disk file
(VMDK) at a given point in time. Snapshots provide a change log for
the virtual disk and are used to restore a VM to a particular point in time when a
failure or system error occurs.

53. What is Windows Deployment Service (WDS)?

 Ans- Windows Deployment Services is a server role that gives administrators the
ability to deploy Windows operating systems remotely. WDS can be used for
network-based installations to set up new computers so administrators do not
have to directly install each operating system (OS).

54. What is prerequisites for WDS?

Ans- Following are the requirements for WDS

a) Active Directory Domain Services

b) DNS Server
c) DHCP Server
d) NTFS Partition

55. What is WIM?

Ans- The Windows Imaging Format (WIM) is a file-based disk image format. It was
developed by Microsoft to help deploy Windows Vista and subsequent versions of
Windows operating system family, as well as Windows Fundamentals for Legacy
PCs.

56. What is WSUS?

Ans- Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), previously known as Software

Update Services (SUS), is a computer program developed by Microsoft
Corporation that enables administrators to manage the distribution
of updates and hot fixes released for Microsoft products to computers in a
corporate environment. WSUS downloads these updates from the Microsoft
Update website and then distributes them to computers on a network. WSUS is
an integral component of Windows Server.

57. What is group policy?

Ans- Group Policy is a hierarchical infrastructure that allows a network

administrator in charge of Microsoft's Active Directory to implement specific
configurations for users and computers. Group Policy can also be used to define
user, security and networking policies at the machine level.
58. What is GPO?

Ans- Group policy object (GPO) is a collection of group policy settings. It can be
created using a Windows utility known as the Group Policy snap-in. GPO affects
the user and computer accounts located in sites, domains, and organizational
units (OUs).

59. What is Group Policy Template (GPT) and Group Policy Container?

Ans- A GPO is a collection of Group Policy settings, stored at the domain level as a
virtual object consisting of a Group Policy container (GPC) and a Group Policy
template (GPT). The GPC, which contains information on the properties of a GPO,
is stored in Active Directory on each domain controller in the domain.

60. What is RAID?

Ans- Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks is a data storage virtualization

technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or
more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance
improvement, or both.

61. Define RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-3, RAID-5, RAID 0 1 and RAID 1 0.

RAID 0, also known as disk striping, is a technique that breaks up a file and
spreads the data across all the disk drives in a RAID group. The benefit of RAID
0 is that it improves performance. If a drive should fail, there is no redundancy
and all data would be lost.

RAID 1, also known as disk mirroring, is the replication of data to two or more
disks. Disk mirroring is a good choice for applications that require high
performance and high availability, such as transactional applications, email and
operating

RAID 3, uses striping at the byte level and stores dedicated parity bits on a
separate disk drive. RAID 3 requires a special controller that allows for the
synchronized spinning of all disks.
RAID 5, is a RAID configuration that uses disk striping with parity. Because data
and parity are striped across all of the disks, no single disk is a bottleneck. Striping
also allows users to reconstruct data in case of a disk failure.

RAID 0 1, RAID 0 1, also called RAID 0+1, is a RAID level using a mirror of stripes,
achieving both replication and sharing of data between disks. The usable capacity
of a RAID 0 1 array is the same as in a RAID 1 array made of the same drives, in
which one half of the drives is used to mirror the other half.

RAID 1 0, configuration requires a minimum of four disks, and stripes data across
mirrored pairs. As long as one disk in each mirrored pair is functional, data can be
retrieved. If two disks in the same mirrored pair fail, all data will be lost because
there is no parity in the striped sets.