Exchange idiot here, bear with me

Ev0

Ev0

Ev0

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Firstly, I apologise for the poorness of my knowledge and the exchange setup I'm about to talk about. It was a quick and dirty way of doing it which has been working flawlessly (and still would be...) for a good number of years now :p

Right, my folks have an SBS2003 server that uses the POP3 connector (I know, I know) to pull down email for various accounts from the company who host and do all their website stuff.

Now they emailed my folks at 20:30 on Friday night saying that they are moving all the logins over to SSL connections and gave out new passwords.

So of course I don't get wind of this until about midday today, and annoyingly I'm out all day and night until now so can't sort it.

Only now do I find out the provided POP3 connector doesn't do ssl, doh.

So a quick nose around and a third party connector is bought to tide them over (just doing that now).

But my real question is how easy/what needs doing to move this setup over to their exchange server doing it all, i.e. removing the pop3 stuff?

Is it a case of getting the MX records changed to point to their server for that email domain (they are on a fixed IP)?

Again forgive me for my n00bishness, I've never really done anything ever with exchange in all my years in IT!

Of course my folks don't (or won't) understand any of this, they don't use the computers heavily bar a few emails here and there and typing up a few docs but I know best practice would dictate a change is needed.

It's also a case of time and me not having much to sort them out :p
 
Ill try and offer a few tips, but i was asking the same questions as you just a few weeks ago!

SBS is all about the wizards, so if you want to do this make sure to run the Configure Email and Internet Wizard.

First you need a static IP on the SBS server, which i assume you have.

As far as the DNS goes, im pretty sure it goes like this:

MX record pointing to the host, ie "mail.domain.co.uk"
A record of the host name, ie "mail" pointing to the static IP

Then run the wizard and you should be pretty much sorted, after waiting for DNS to propogate.
 
In order to move it to a "proper" SMTP setup you need several things.

You need to own the domain name(s) involved and have control of the DNS settings for them.

You need a static IP with port forwarding set up for port 25 (SMTP) to the SBS server

You then need to configure the MX records for the domain name(s) to the public IP of the SBS server. MX records need to point to host(A) records or aliases, so you'll need to configure a hostname of something like mail.yourdomain.com and set the MX record to that
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Might be worth looking at a hosted solution?
Click to expand...

They won't go for this as it costs money :) They are tight and to them as it is now it works (well now I bought the new pop3 connector) so what's the problem lol :)

Can honestly say their IT spend in the last 2 years has been well less than a grand and that was only fo ra new server for a remote office. Take that out of the figures and you're talking about 60 quid for the software I bought last night and a few quid for my time, and that's about it in 6 years!
 
I'd just leave it as it is, yes a proper smtp setup would be better practice but the setup they have now is working fine and fullfills there needs. The question you need to ask yourself is what business value will your proposed changes add? To which I think the likely answer is none.
 
a1ex2001 said:
I'd just leave it as it is, yes a proper smtp setup would be better practice but the setup they have now is working fine and fullfills there needs. The question you need to ask yourself is what business value will your proposed changes add? To which I think the likely answer is none.
Click to expand...

2 i can think of is adding new email addresses will be much easier, and you won't have to pay for pop3 hosting.
 
a1ex2001 said:
I'd just leave it as it is, yes a proper smtp setup would be better practice but the setup they have now is working fine and fullfills there needs. The question you need to ask yourself is what business value will your proposed changes add? To which I think the likely answer is none.
Click to expand...

Yup exactly, nail on head. Whilst it's not the best practice way of doing things it was always the best for the customer (well, my parents :p).

pop3 hosting is included at no charge with their current deal, and the guys are very quick to add new addresses not that there's ever a time critical situation for them. They only have 2 members of staff :)

I am going to leave it for now but tell them I can do it if need be and that the only noticible difference to them would be emails get to them instantly rather than having to wait up to 15mins for the pop3 connector to run.
 
Plus all the additional functionality of a fully fledged exchange environment, public folders, exclaimer etc....

But for 2 users, pop3 would be fine imo.
 
Sp00n said:
Plus all the additional functionality of a fully fledged exchange environment, public folders, exclaimer etc....

But for 2 users, pop3 would be fine imo.
Click to expand...

Yup but they don't need or would even begin to understand that lol.

I've tried getting them to use their diaries at least for things but that went over their heads :p
 
I know how you feel, the amount of times I've tried to "sell exchange to people who already have SBS just flat out refuse... "oh its fine the way it is" yes but!!!!! :(

Carry on.
 
Can I just ask a very related question because I am also battling the powers that be to remove POP3 connectors and migrate to a full Exchange solution.

My client has a domain, and static IP, along with SBS, however when I mentioned they move all Mail services onto their server they asked if it meant that should their server fall over or the power fails for longer than the UPS can hold it for, would all mail bounce back to the sender? I was unsure of the answer and assumed they were correct (I've been busy so not had chance to look into it).

So my question is, if I remove POP and my server falls over, what happens to any mail that is arriving? In a POP3 environment I don't lose emails if my server falls down....

Thanks in advance.
 
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