Direct File Access (DFA) in Exchange Server 2007

Think of a situation where you are in the meeting outside and suddenly you need to access some of the documents which are located in your company's internal network or UNC file share. VPN connection will need to be created to access these documents which may take some time. Direct File Access feature allows you to access your company’s documents from OWA without establishing VPN connection. As we know, Client Access Server (CAS) has replaced the front-end server in Exchange Server 2003, and so CAS works as a proxy and provide you the access of those documents without exposing the store on the internet.

Direct File Access feature is enabled by default when installing Exchange Server 2007. But if you enable Form-based authentication, this feature will only be enabled if user will select Private computers option on the logon page.

We can configure this feature from EMC and PowerShell both.

For this exercise, we will configure the Direct File Access from the Exchange Management Console (EMC).

1. Open the Exchange Management Console from the Start menu.

2. Expand Server Configuration and highlight Client Access

3. Right click on owa (Default Web Site) and click on Properties.

Figure-1 Exchange Management Console

4. As you can see in Figure 2 and 3, DFA is enabled by default, for Public and Private Computer.

Figure-2 Public Computer File Access

Figure-3 Private Computer File Access

5. By clicking on Allow or Block tabs, we can restrict the DFA access.

Figure-4 Direct File Access settings

6. WevReady Document Viewing Settings page allows administrators to allow or block the file type access.

Figure-5 WebReady Document Viewing Settings page

7. Unknown tab allow you to configure how unknown file types will be handled. We can Allow, Force Save and Block then unknown file formats.

Figure-6 Direct File Access Settings