Exchange experience?

Discussion in 'Employment & Jobs' started by guildhall, Jan 23, 2013.

  1. guildhall

    guildhall Bit Poster

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    Hi Guys,

    just a quick question. I am new to the world of IT support. A lot of jobs adverts are asking for Exchange 2003/2008. I have been working for a year as 1st line support. What kind of experience are they asking for in exchange?

    So far my only experience of exchange is to go in and add new mailboxes and link it to users in AD, adjust mailbox sizes, create shared mailboxes and distribution groups. I also know how to redirect emails to a specific mailbox. Are these the sort of experience that companies are asking for or is it something much more advanced?

    Many thanks!
     
  2. Kitkatninja
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    It will be dependant on the job role itself, one company may be looking for someone who does the day to day stuff, some will be looking for more.
     
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  3. Gav

    Gav Kilobyte Poster

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    I think it very much depends on the role itself. We run large multi-tenant Exchange deployments, so our 1st/2nd line guys are required to know a bit of basic PowerShell (Get-Mailbox, Set-Mailbox etc).

    If you're looking to work for a small, non-IT business, you'll probably find yourself doing basic tasks (such as adding/removing mailboxes), rather than dealing with complex issues as lot of small companies outsource the more complex Exchange stuff to 3rd party IT support companies.

    Exchange is one of Microsoft's best products in my opinion and, if you don't know it now, it's definitely worth learning. If you want to practice (on Exchange 2010), you can sign up for the Exchange Online element of Office 365 for around £3/month. Granted, you won't get access to the backend of things, but you do get access to the Exchange Control Panel, as well as almost all of the Exchange PowerShell CmdLets, so its a very good place to start.

    - Gav
     
    ade1982 likes this.
  4. Shinigami

    Shinigami Megabyte Poster

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    Keep in mind that Exchange 2003 extended support ends a year from now. Companies that haven't moved on to something newer, can end up having unsupported issues. Exchange 2003 is also not supported in an environment with Windows 2012 DC's, so if you still want to learn Exchange 2003, you should balance the amount of effort in a reasonable manner.

    Exchange 2007, 2010 and 2013 are very different to 2003 (but similar between themselves) and I think it'd be just better to concentrate on brushing up on Exchange 2007 or newer skills, rather than getting into the game now and learning 2003 inside out. Of course, if it aint broke, many companies will want to keep 2003. But they do this at their own detriment.

    Also, Exchange 2013 schema updates are not supported in an environment that still runs 2003... so those companies that procrastinate too long, may find it a lot tougher to move to newer things a few years from now. Doing a double hop migration (say, 2003 to 2010, and then 2010 to 2013 and so on) is just a lot more work. Get off those old 2003 servers now is what I say :)
     
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