1

I have an Exchange server at work that I want to use to send and receive email across the Internet with. It is all setup and has been in place for some time.

We’ve been using our ISP’s email addresses and POP’ing in to download the email and storing that on the Exchange server, but now we want to get a domain name and use the Exchange server as our in house email server.

I know we need a static IP address from our ISP, but what else do we need to get and setup?

Thanks for all help.

4 Spice ups
2

you will have to forward port 25 (SMTP) to your Exchange box and change your MX record from your ISP to your static IP.

(In a nut shell)

3

You need to see if your ISP blocks the port 25. Some do to prevent spam coming from their network.

4

If you are purchasing a domain for the first time in order to host mail on it, you’ll need to either choose a registrar that will host your DNS records for you, or host it yourself in-house on something like Windows Server or a Linux distribution. You’ll be sure to want to set up a MX on that DNS and ask your ISP for assistance with a rDNS on that IP. A reverse DNS helps determine your IP as legitimate and not a spammer. I’d recommend adding a SPF record to your DNS as well, it will help legitimatize your messages and stop others from spoofing your domain. There are additional verification measures that are possible, but those two are pretty easy and basic.

Once you start working with your DNS, a useful tool to check how it’s working is intoDNS. You can see Spicework’s info at intoDNS: spiceworks.com - check DNS server and mail server health It gives pretty good information about if your MX servers are set correctly and if your DNS in general is set correctly.

I don’t know about .au, but usually if it’s a business class ISP, they won’t be blocking any ports to you; however a worry I have is about spam. My domain gets 96% blocked messages every day (granted some of those are obvious farming or from the early days of our website). I’d highly suggest buying an antispam appliance or using a service like Postini (owned by Google) to filter the messages before they hit your Exchange server.

What kind of firewall do you have protecting your network and how many IPs do you have from your ISP? Ideally I would have one reserved solely for the mail server and have your firewall forward only the necessary ports on the IP for email and OWA to your Exchange server.

I’ve said a lot and some of it may not make sense, so please ask additional questions for clarification.

5

Consider still using an outside provider to scrub your mail before it hits your server, such as MX Logic or one of their partners like SpamSoap, who we use. Check for vendors in your country.

It cuts down on traffic to your server by over 50% and they can do Disaster Recovery, Mail Archiving and outbound scrubbing as well.

Eric

6

If your users are using Outlook as their email client and you do not plan on using POP (I hate POP), I would also recommend looking into getting a security certificate for your exchange server and reading up on configuring RPC over HTTP. This is eliminate the need for VPN software and anyone who has a laptop and internet available will be able to use their Outlook client and access their email as if they were in the office (they will love you for this one). It is a cheaper option and a lot less hassel and overhead than dealing with VPN software everywhere.

You did not mention the version of Exchange but you probably have users who have BlackBerrys, Droid devices and/or iPhone/iPads. For BB’s you can now get BES express for free (I would recommend setting BES express up on another server or a virtual) and the rest will be able to obtain email using the Push technology (so long as your users do not use POP). It is not uncommon for upper management, especially the CEO to go “oh, I have a BB I want to get my email on”, then a week later phone you and say, “I bought an iPad, tell me how do I get my email on it, NOW!”, then phone you two weeks later and say “I got an iPhone, I didn’t like the BB, how do I get my email on it?”. A little prep will save you a lot of hassels …

My recommendations are:

  1. Do not allow POP to be used to pull the email (they will pull it on their desktop then check email using another device and then they cannot find it) … telling POP to save it on the server is not a good option because sometimes it thinks they have not downloaded 200 messages and re-downloads them to their computer

  2. Get a security certificate and set up RPC over HTTP

  3. Look into BES express (if you have BB’s) … there is a lot of security with this including locking and wiping a BB if it is lost

  4. Make sure you set up and confirgure “Push” technology on the Exchange server … depending on the version of Exchange it may or may not be completely configured automatically

  5. Get your hands on each one of these devices and test them with your own account, you will definitely need the experience …

Getting your own Exchange server up and running fully for a company under your own control is like a crack in the dam, the flood gates of requests for different options/solutions/etc will open up.

7

Thank you all for your valuable help.

My company is running Exchange 2003. They have a single IP address. I can configure the DNS records with the registrar we just purchased the domain through, so that’s OK. So what I need to do there is point an MX record at the static IP we have, does that sound correct?

I also have to forward port 25 on my firewall to the internal IP of the Exchange server; correct?

I will look at the RPC over HTTP option that sounds great as well as a Spam solution.

Is there a way I can check to see if my ISP is blocking port 25?

Thanks again.

8

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Nice of MS to publish this to test things with.

9

You wrote:

My company is running Exchange 2003. They have a single IP address. I can configure the DNS records with the registrar we just purchased the domain through, so that’s OK. So what I need to do there is point an MX record at the static IP we have, does that sound correct?

I say:

Yes, it’s correct but seriously, don’t expose your port 25 to the world. Have an outside provider scrub your mail, you point your MX record to them and then only open port 25 to their ip range. They send you all the mail. It saves a world of problems with virus’ and spam…

10

+1 Ericl

Look at implementing a ‘basic’ Spam filter on your firewall this will save your exchange server from getting bogged down !

11

Thanks EricL I like the sound of that. I’ll look into that and see what providers are based in Australia.