1. What is TCP Chimney Offload?

There are 3 distinct things.

Receive Side Scaling (RSS)

Windows networking limits receive protocol processing to a single CPU and cause
a bottleneck in newer multiprocessor systems. RSS resolve this issue by enabling
the packets received to be balanced across multiple CPU.

TCP Chimney/TCP Offloading

It is to take processing of the network (packet segmentation/reassembly processing
tasks) from a computers CPU to a NIC that supports TCP Chimney offload.

Network Direct Memory Access (NetDMA)

NetDMA provides generic access to DMA engines that can perform memory-tomemory data transfer with little CPU involvement. It is designed to take work away
from the CPU by allowing the NIC to move data from receive buffers without using
CPU as much

Why would I want to disable these wonderful features?

Many NIC support these features, but not many perform it very well at all in reality.
It will cause drivers misbehaving with these features which had a knock on effect on
the network traffic. This in turn will cause a wide range of weird and wonderful
symptoms seen across the board from Exchange to SQL. Turning off TCP
Chimney/Offloading/RSS became an almost standard troubleshooting step.

2. What is Client Access Array

It provides an easy way for client application to configure itself with minimal user
input. (TBC)

3. What is Offline Address Books (OAB)

OAB is used by Microsoft Outlook clients in Cached Exchange Mode for address book
lookups when offline. It is critical in reducing the workload on Exchange server as
cached mode Outlook clients will always query local OAB first.

4. What is Database Availability Groups (DAG)

It is a high availability (HA) and data recovery feature of Exchange Server 2010. It
can consist up to 16 Exchange mailbox servers that automates recovery at
database-level after a database, server or network failure.

5. What is Certificate Revocation List (CRL)

A list of certificates that are not valid either because they expired or they were
forced to be revoked (e.g. The certificate is compromised)

6. What is Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

7. What is Exchange Web Services (EWS)
EWS provides functionality to enable client application to communicate with
Exchange server.
Services.wsdl

Describes the contract between client and server

Messages.xsd

Defines the request and response SOAP messages

Types.xsd

Defines the elements used in the SOAP messages

8. What Is Free/Busy Data

This information will indicate what requested time range is free, busy and tentative
for a particular user. It will also provide any out of office (oof) status.

9. What is Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

A powerful technology for creating distributed client/server programs. The RPC runtime subs and libraries manage most of the processes relating to network protocols
and communication.

10.

RPC over HTTP [Security]

RPC over HTTP traffic protected once by RPC, then doubly protected by tunneling
mechanism by RPC over HTTP. The RPC over HTTP tunneling mechanism are as
follow
i.
ii.

Provides security through IIS

Provides SSL encryption and RPC proxy verification

iii.

Provides restrictions on the RPC proxy level dictating which machines on

the server network are allowed to receive RPC over HTTP calls