MS Domain, Active Dir., and Exchange

I am interviewing for jobs right now and I cannot get one because everyone is asking about my Exchange experience. I've commercially set up only around 10 Win2k Domain networks but I've never had the opportunity to use or play w/ Exchange.

How much does Windows2k Domain and Active Directory depend on Exchange? Do ppl in corporate enviroment actualy use it to send E-mail or only for inter-office messaging? Where can I learn how to config and use Exchange short of pirate copy?

Any input would be appriciated.

Exchange is dependent as hell on AD. It is used for both inter0office mail and for outter office mail. It provides a central storage for all email (easy to back up). It also serves as a nice layer of protection from viruses/spam. An exchange server is not necessary, but it great to have. As far as training goies, im not sure. There -might- be a simulator or something, but I dout it becasue of how many components it actually has.

If you have set up many active directory domains then you already know a good deal about exchange. The users mail box is integrated and mostly controlled through active directory users and computers. As for exchange their is a mailbox store that actually correlates a user to it's mail, a virtual server that functions as an SMTP device and if you can learn a little about those then "fake" it and read read read. ;) Oh and backups have to be done through a device that can manipulate exchange like windows backup to the exchange store. You manipulate front end user attibutes via active directory and backend via Exchange Manager

There is a trial version of exchange... however I believe it's only the latest 2003 systems...



HERE

There is very little difference between exchange 2000 and 2003. The biggest differences are what is turned on/off by default and how the SMTP queue viewer works. You get some extra features in 2003, but nothing major over than RPC over HTTP which I don't see as being a good idea.