MS Exchange?

Trigger

Trigger

Trigger

Soldato
Joined
15 Dec 2004
Posts
3,819
Hi,

At work, we have IMail provided by county. Now, non of the staff and kids will use it because it takes so long to log in to and is internet based so what we wanted to do was run an email client- we already have licenses for outlook so we thought we may as well start there.

We still want to use the addresses given to us by county but we need the users' mailboxes to be the same whichever machine they log on to so I'm fairly sure that we need to implement Microsoft Exchange.

Here's where the problem arises- we've never used exchange before so don't know where to start and we don't even know if it can do what we want it to so I would appreciate some help and advice on how to do it if possible please.

I've got a 120 day trial version of exchange here that I'm about to install so I can have a practise :o

Thanks in advance for any help :)

Ben
 
Have you considered running Small Business Server 2003 I have no idea how many users you've got but that sounds like the way forward. You could use web outlook has about 80% functionality of an email client.
Have the pcs on a domain, then it wouldnt mattter who logged in where.
Actually I don't even know if your exchange trial has web outlook?
 
Ah, well we're a school with about 650 kids and 50 teachers so I don't think SBS would do considering we already run 5 dual xeons with Server 2003 Standard Edition as well as ISA 2000 and an Avantis CD Server :D

Thanks for the help though :cool:

Any more offers?

Thanks

Ben
 
It's perfectly capable of what you want, and it works very well with Outlook (obviously). When setup properly with an SMTP feed in it's pretty impressive, and a total breeze to use from a client perspective. OWA is very good too - almost all the Outlook functionality in IE.

The best thing you could do is 'suck it and see'. Install the trial copy and try it out - as it's an MS product, it's not too hard to use & configure.

There's a lot of information, guides etc over at www.msexchange.org - I found all that very helpful when trying it for the first time.
 
Installation isn't too complicated (as a general rule) But i would definately install it on a "spare" server just in case you manage to screw it up.

It will do pretty much everything you want it to do. Mailboxes are stored on the server. These can be accessed with pretty much any email client, but the preffered would be Outlook using mapi (as in you get most functionality out of it). Outlook does have a web based front end as well called Outlook Web Access that can be very useful for checking emails remotely. Ask here or feel free to catch me on MSN if you have any more questions.

EDIT: The site csmager suggested is very good.
 
Thanks to everyone for the help :cool:

oddjob62, I might just take you up on that offer if you don't mind...

I've got exchange installed and I've created a few users with mailboxes. I've installed outlook to test it and it works fine with the domain name user @ testnet.local but I need it to work with their county email address and don't know how to do it. Secondly, we already have all of our users in active directory so is there any way to add mailboxes to them without recreating them?

Thanks

Ben
 
In look for recipient policies in the Exchange System Manager. Edit the default one and add @domain.county.sch.uk (or whatever). Exchange will now accept mail for that domain. Set it as default and all users with mailboxes following the default policy will now have their outgoing set to [email protected]

You can right click a user in AD Users & Computers, goto exchange tasks and add mailbox. I'm sure MS would have devloped a bulk method of doing this (it might even be as easy as highlighting a load of users), but I've not done it.
 
Thanks :)

Few questions...

1.) If I edit this, can my domain name still be testnet.local?

2.) To edit it, do I need to double click default policy, go to the email addresses tab and where it said 'smtp: @testnet.local', do I change it so it says '@domain.county.sch.uk'?

3.) I have done the above and in outlook it claims that the email account does not exist at the organization that the mail was sent to and gets sent straight back to me :confused:

Any ideas?

Thanks

Ben
 
Right, bit of an update. I've got the mail working internally but because I'm off work for 7 weeks now I can't test it with anything external. What I can't understand is that if someone uses their ISP's email account for example to send an email to user1 @ domain.county.sch.uk, it will go to county's servers but how will it know to come to our exchange server? Also, if user1 sends and email to email @ isp.com, how will it get out of the internal network because as I see it at the moment, it will get stuck at the exchange server :confused:

The other thing is, at work all the kids use one mandatory profile, the staff user another and so on. If the profile is mandatory, how will outlook configure itself to use that specific users mailbox?

Sorry for being n00bish :o

Thanks

Ben
 
perhaps some sort of logon script that can see the current username and bind outlook w/ that username until it logs off?!? Am sure there is an easy way of doing this...
 
Trigger said:
Right, bit of an update. I've got the mail working internally but because I'm off work for 7 weeks now I can't test it with anything external. What I can't understand is that if someone uses their ISP's email account for example to send an email to user1 @ domain.county.sch.uk, it will go to county's servers but how will it know to come to our exchange server? Also, if user1 sends and email to email @ isp.com, how will it get out of the internal network because as I see it at the moment, it will get stuck at the exchange server :confused:

The other thing is, at work all the kids use one mandatory profile, the staff user another and so on. If the profile is mandatory, how will outlook configure itself to use that specific users mailbox?

Sorry for being n00bish :o

Thanks

Ben
Click to expand...

Ok....

Incoming....
Within DNS there are records known as MX records. If you open up a command prompt. type "nslookup" [return] type "set q=mx" [return] then type a domain eg hotmail.com. You will see the mx records for that domain. This tells email servers where to send mail for that domain.

Outgoing....
As you can see from above. By default exchange will send by DNS. ie it will look at the domain in the recipent address. Look for the MX record for that domain, and then send it to the server that handles mail for that domain.
 
Thanks again for your help :cool:

I'm still quite confused though, so are you now saying that we don't need the mailboxes that county give us? If we do, then I can't see how it will authenticate with the county servers as to send email they normally log into their web mail. So what I need is for exchange to pull email from the user's mailbox on county's server so they can view it in outlook on our internal network. Then, if they want to send mail it will go to our exchange server and then to county's servers where it will go to its intended recepient. They need to have the same mail appear though in their exchange mailbox and in their webmail if possible.

I don't know whether I'm making things much more complicated than they are or what but thanks for putting up with my n00b like questions :o

Thanks again,

Ben

EDIT: Any ideas on the profiles?
 
Tigger, its probably best if you try and find some literature and have a read on how exchange works. It will then help you when you come to install it. I don't mean that in a derogatory way.

When I was learning SBS 2003 I read the book first, played with the software with the book to hand and then started deploying SBS.

As I said no offence intended if I'm way off.
 
No offence taken mate :)

I'm more than happy in a server environment, it's just how this exchange lark works really and I'm not the best person on DNS either :o

I've got a big MS course book on Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange 2000 but it's massive so I'm going to read it when I go on holiday :)

Thanks for the advice though,

Ben
 
are you now saying that we don't need the mailboxes that county give us?

Correct

So what I need is for exchange to pull email from the user's mailbox on county's server so they can view it in outlook on our internal network.

That could get tricky. That means using 2 mail systems. Better if you can completely move over to exchange if you are planning on using it.

Then, if they want to send mail it will go to our exchange server and then to county's servers where it will go to its intended recepient.

No ideally the Exchange server will send direct to the recipient server (although generally you will set it to relay through as smarthost)

They need to have the same mail appear though in their exchange mailbox and in their webmail if possible.

Like i said before... this could make things tricky. Any reason why you need this?

EDIT: Any ideas on the profiles/

hmmm... again tricky, iirc there is a tool in the office resoruce kit to change the install setup of office so you can set up default settings on a profile. I'd have to check again
Click to expand...
 
Right, thanks for all the replies guys. Sorry I haven't replied recently, I've been in Portugal :p :D

Anyway, I've been reading my book whilst I've been away and understand it a bit more now hopefully...

As I see it, outgoing mail is no problem as it won't need to use county's server and it can just use the mail exchanger records on our server. I've looked at smart hosts as well which would forward all unresolved dns addresses to a different server however if I have dns set to allow dynamic updates then it shouldn't be necessary should it?

The only thing I can't grasp at the moment though is incoming mail. I now understand it would be too difficult to use county's servers so I'm going to bin the idea of using their webmail as well and then possibly look at setting up outlook web access. I really need though to use the same email addresses that we have at the moment so would I need to ask county if it would be possible to forward all email traffic for that domain to our IP address and then forward ports 25 and 443 on our router and ISA server to the internal exchange server?

Also any advice on security would be appreciated as the book didn't cover much of that.

Thanks for the help again, it's very much appreciated :)

Ben
 
Trigger said:
would I need to ask county if it would be possible to forward all email traffic for that domain to our IP address and then forward ports 25 and 443 on our router and ISA server to the internal exchange server?

Also any advice on security would be appreciated as the book didn't cover much of that.

Thanks for the help again, it's very much appreciated :)

Ben
Click to expand...

No you need them to point the MX records for that domain to your IP for your exchange server.

The rest is correct.

Security... Well Exchange is pretty secure (assuming you patch it fully) by default. Off the top of my head i can't think of any settings that can't be left as they are with the default installation.
 
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