Best disk / mail setup for this solution?

Ironic Namesake · 7 Dec 2008 at 10:04

In the process of setting up a SBS 2003 server for the office, mainly to have Exchange ( we are 6 users)

Currently we have a Proliant DL380 G3 with 2 x 36.4 GB Ultra3 SCSI drives.

Will be adding another 4 of these drives for some more storage space.

Currently with the 2 they only show up as one drive 36.4 Gb in total - why is this?

Also is POP3 connector the best way to get our e-mails onto Exchange or is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance, I'm new to this !

Ironic Namesake · 7 Dec 2008 at 11:11

Aha great - so that means if one disk dies from those 2 ,the server will still be running?

Ironic Namesake · 7 Dec 2008 at 13:10

Our office connection is just a standard BT business line and not great at times, so I guess POP3 connector will be the best option for that.

Ironic Namesake · 7 Dec 2008 at 13:46

Great - will be patient and wait for my other drices to turn up so I can redirect My Documents/Desktop etc. for everyone.

Shame that Vista Home doesn't work with SBS 2k3

Ironic Namesake · 7 Dec 2008 at 13:51

Yup was planning on Raid 5

Ironic Namesake · 8 Dec 2008 at 09:45

nightmare99 said:
None of the home MS OS can be joined to a domain, XP Home, XP Media Center,Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium.

Yup I noticed when trying to add a laptop with Vista to the domain.

Without joining domain is there still a way of sharing printers, fax services etc?

Ironic Namesake · 31 Dec 2008 at 10:04

neil_g said:
as long as youre not on dial up and have a static external IP you should be able to get your ISP to route all of your mail to your exchange server. easy peasy.

How would we go about getting this done for the e-mail going to our domain?

We don't have a static IP here- can we use something like DynDNS?

What DNS settings would I need to change (if we can use DynDNS that is)

Ironic Namesake · 31 Dec 2008 at 13:05

I

atomiser said:
have you already installed sbs onto the server? i always prefer to have two seperate arrays for sbs, install the first disk (basic server 2003) onto the first array (something like a raid1), and then continue the install shifting everything else to be installed over to the other array (something like raid5). this just helps to separate duties between different sets of disk i/o as there is quite a bit going on with sbs.

edit: last server i put in, a few months back, was a poweredge 2900 iii - ran that with 15k sas drives, a pair of 72gigs in raid1 for the basic os install, and then quad 72gigs in raid5 for everything else that needed to be installed (incl sql on top of everything) and for all their data too. works a treat.

I have indeed installed everything already unfortunately !

Raid 1 for the OS and all the data on Raid 5

Just trying to get my head around sorting the e-mail now !

Ironic Namesake · 31 Dec 2008 at 13:29

I'm currently using a POP3 connector to collect the mail - although if I can use something like DynDNS without having static IP to collect the mail , would be great (we currently have DynDNS set up for other bits)

For outgoing mail when I sent to hotmail for example it bounces back .. something about coming from dynamic IP , so I thought need to change something with DNS on domain to resolve this.

Ironic Namesake · 31 Dec 2008 at 16:41

Not many - will only have around 8 mailboxes. - I don't have the exact error message at hand now unfortunately - I think it is because we haven't linked our domain name to the server IP at all !

Quite important that mail doesn't get lost so maybe best to stick with POP 3 connector for now - will try and get the outgoing resolved on Monday

Ironic Namesake · 12 Jan 2009 at 20:26

We've been using the POP3 connector for a bit now and it seems to be working nicely - no problems yet

Outlook web access seems to work well too which is very useful.

Is it possible to connect to my exchange box when not on the LAN, so I can pick up work e-mails from home?

Ironic Namesake · 22 Jan 2009 at 21:31

Well, server was up and running fine for a while , OWA working great etc. no problems at all nice and stable.

Today, server crashes - orange lights on 3 of the 6 HDDs, boots into Windows - the Raid 5 array disappeared, then after reboot doesn't go into Windows at all anymore , now the smartarray setup at startup is telling me to replace ALL drives

Maybe I'll have to take up the idea of a hosted exchange box elsewhere for the future, so someone else can maintain it

Ironic Namesake · 22 Jan 2009 at 22:36

No hardware support on this unfortunately..... its on surge protection/UPS

We have backups of the important bits, yup.

I was thinking the controller has gone too , I tried some other drives and they're working fine so I doubt the drives are actually faulty.

There is a few bits I wouldn't mind being able to retrieve, but don't know how easy this will be ... seeing as I won't be able to reinstall SBS!