Best disk / mail setup for this solution?

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.
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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 !
 
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.
 
it could be reverse dns lookup causing that - not sure how reverse lookup works in terms of dynamic dns, or if it even possible, as i've only ever worked with static addressing for simplicity. if you dont have a static address, and your internet connectivity is unreliable then it could be a mistake to get mail delivered directly to your server. after the basic retry mechanisms built into email systems if your server is unavailable then new incoming mail will be lost. if your going to do mail directly then i would always recommend getting it put through a smarthost first to take care of spam filtering and server outtages. if you dont want to do any of this then continuing to use the pop connector might make more sense. how many mailboxes are you dealing with?
 
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 :)
 
to be fair, and i appreciate this is hindsight, it would have probably been easier for you to just get a hosted exchange setup for 8 boxes - especially if you are not going to utilise the other features of sbs (are you?), then you don't have to mess around with maintenance (not that sbs really needs that much if it is setup properly), backups, etc.
 
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?
 
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 :p

Maybe I'll have to take up the idea of a hosted exchange box elsewhere for the future, so someone else can maintain it :p
 
hmmm, that sounds like you've been extremely unlucky... you have hardware support on this box, right? extremely unlikely that all disks would fail simultaneously?! do you have the server on at least surge protection, but surely a ups?! that said, i would have thought the whole box would have been toast if there were power issues. could be the raid controller thats fubar. you have backups, right?
 
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!
 
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