January 2012 Question of the Month
What feature was brought back from the dead in Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010?
ANSWER: The answer will be discussed at the meeting and posted online shortly after.
December 2011 Question of the Month
What free tool can be used to determine what types of devices are connecting to your Exchange Server (CAS role)? Very useful for troubleshooting high RPC usage or client-side load.
November 2011 Question of the Month
Name 3 features that are integrated between Exchange 2010 & Lync 2010 Server.
ANSWER:
Calendar availability, presence (free/busy) status, and unified messaging (voicemail, call flows, etc). More integration documentation can be found on this Technet Blog/ – Click HERE.
October 2011 Question of the Month
What is the function called that protects Exchange 2007/2010 Hub & Transport Servers from excessive connections from users and/or servers?
ANSWER:
Message Throttling. This built-in function automatically protects the Exchange Server from “excessive” usage by slowing down client or other server connections. A frequent usage of auto-throttling is inbound mail speed.
Microsoft TechNet Library on Message Throttling – Click HERE.
September 2011 Question of the Month
What are 2 major dangers that can affect availability with Cloud deployments due to big economies of scale?
ANSWER:
Amplication & Isolation. Amplication can incur issues when automated “fixes” and larger failures can make recovering more difficult (e.g. try rebooting all your iSCSI booted hosts at the same time). Isolation since a user/company can cause problems for other companies sharing the service (e.g. a DoS can effect thousands of companies). Normally, this would not be an issue with companies with separate hardware & environments. Exchange General Manager Perry Clarke explains that Microsoft is aware and has been working to improve Exchange to be the best solution for the last few years. Microsoft TechNet Blog Posting by Exchange General Manager Perry Clarke – Click HERE.
August 2011 Question of the Month
Microsoft BPOS and Office 365 and Google’s Gmail for Business Email offer what SLA for email transit timing (aka how long an email will take to arrive to you)?
ANSWER:
Will be posted after the meeting on August 9.
July 2011 Question of the Month
What new technique is being used by spammers to obfuscate URLs in messages?
ANSWER:
URL shortening websites such at bit.ly. The normal technique anti-spammer solution to detect bad URLs is based on DNS lookups on the domain portion of the URL. So, a spammer using bit.ly/897237 and a good URL of bit.ly/329082 were considered equal. So, the new anti-spammer technique to address this to use the full URL. So, make sure you’re anti-spam solution is capable of checking full URLs. The anti-spammer technique for URL checking is called SURBLs. Make sure your SURBL solution can look-up full URLs. such as this bit.ly/searchthispart.html as well.
June 2011 Question of the Month
For Exchange 2010 SP2 (per planned release in 2nd half 2011) , GAL segmentation has changed in what way?
ANSWER:
Click here for more information. With the release of SP2 the way GAL segmentation will work has been changed. GAL segmentation allowed administrators to optimize address lists in large companies, creating smaller ‘virtual’ organizations, with users only able to see the users they need to see. In previous versions of Exchange GAL Segmentation was ACL based on a permission structure. With Exchange 2010 SP2 GAL Segmentation will be delivered using an “Address Book Policy” assignment model.
May 2011 Question of the Month
For Exchange 2010, when a user flags a message high priority does it really make it arrive faster than other messages?
ANSWER:
This is a new feature is called priority queuing. It is configurable on the Hub Transport Server to prioritize messages based on the end user classification within Outlook. MSExchange.org Article – Click HERE.
April 2011 Question of the Month
For Exchange 2010 DAG (HA), does the witness server need to be an Exchange Server?
ANSWER:
No, any domain based Windows Server with File Sharing enabled that all DAG members can see. Microsoft TechNet Article on DAQ Requirements – Click HERE.