Microsoft Exchange and Remote Desktop Services Specialists

SEMblog

Microsoft Exchange Server and
Blackberry Enterprise Server news, views and fixes.

New Online Testing Tool from the Microsoft Exchange team

So you have setup your Exchange 2007 server and now wonder whether it works correctly.
The DNS changes are in place, the SSL certificate works, but how do you test it?

Or your server isn't working correct and you want to test it from an external host - but how can you do that quickly and easily?

A new tool from the Microsoft Exchange team, currently in prototype/development may well be something to help you. https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ can currently test Autodiscover, Outlook Anywhere (which should work for Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007), ActiveSync and inbound SMTP.
Inbound SMTP can obviously be used to test any server.

For the tests that require accounts, I would suggest configuring a test account which can be disposed of later, although Microsoft do state (on the "Is this secure" link) "

Passwords gathered using this tool are not stored by the server.  Passwords are encrypted in memory inside of the user's browser using a key only known to this server.  When passwords are transmitted to the server, they are encrypted using the server key and only transmitted to the server over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection.  As always however, it is recommend that you use a disposable test account for any testing done over the Internet."

The tool runs over SSL (using the same type of certificates available from http://CertificatesForExchange.com) so you should be able to use it from the Exchange server itself.
It does require the relevant ports to be open and information in the public DNS records, so no use for test environments that are not exposed to the internet and anything that is exposed will have to be secure. However for the final test before going live it is ideal.

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Comments are closed