Hello fellow geeks

I've got a company that has wants to be able to 'dial in' to their office on the road and also to be able to access their e-mails on the go. They want their e-mails to be stored centrally so they can access from anywhere.

They have asked me if I can set this up and also run exchange. Now I have put fileservers in before, based on Win2k and Win2k3 - most of it self taught (so I'm sure I've nto done everything by the book).

I am pretty happy to configure a fileserver and setup VPN. I've never installed or configured an Exchange server before. It is something that is fairly straight forward for a technical person?

I'm keen to take on the work but don't want to find we've bitten off more than we can chew! Ideally, I'd like to try out a system virtually first using VMware - is this possible ?

 

if you want to use exhange 2007 you could download a vhd with it preconfigured from ms.. www.microsoft.com/vhd

 

Thanks for the link. Will look into it.

 

take out the headache and go for a fully managed hosted service

 

I've briefly seen this mentioned SwissTony. Does that basically mean a company will take care of your e-mail - you just log into their server and download what you need?

They also want access to their own files at anytime - presumeably this would be better from their own server.

ie E-mail = managed by 3rd party
Files = VPN to their own Win2k3 server.

 

David

Ive been looking at that VHD of Exchange 2007 and its 30 day eval only, which is pretty damn pointless for a 10 Gb download

Instead I downloaded the CD images from msdn, and installed them on my laptop as VMware machines and considering the requirements of Exchange 2007 it runs really well, OWA is quite nice too

We do a hosted Exchange service (we are an ISP too)

With a hosted Exchange you get everything you would if it was your own email system in your own premises except we manage it and back it up, and make sure there is no downtime

There is a trade off in cost though, but then you dont have to pay for someone who is skilled in exchange to install it, or manage and maintain it

 

If its only email access on the road then why not use Miscrosoft outlook web access ?
Easy to configure on exchange

Richard

 

Doh.. I've just downloaded it and not got it up and running yet.. Want to have a play with the NetApp simulator and thought I would have a look at CCR and how well snapmanager for exchange works..

Will log in to licencing.microsoft.com instead !! or grab an msdn cd from work and stick it on a VM..

David

 

I used the MSDN download library

Its better to do it that way anyway, as the VHD is mainly for showcasing Live Communication Server

Get yourself plenty of ram though (I had to assign 2Gb to the 64bit VM just so it doesnt page to disk) but then I have put all roles on the one VM (bar edge sync as you cant do that one one box anyway) and I got another VM with 32 bit running the AD side of things

Tip for you though, make sure you get the SP1 version, and there are quite a few pre-recs required too

64bit Encoder
64bit encoder update
Dot Net 2 SP1
MSXML 6

Think that is all of them, but it will warn you on the install anyway

 

cheers, forgot it was 64 bit

Theres 8gb of ram in the box im planning on trying it on, so should be ok!

 

They have done a 32bit version but it is NOT for production environments, even the management tools are NOT for production environments, and doubt they will be either

 

Agreed. Google will do this for free with your mail delivered via IMAP or you can pay for a few extra options Google Apps

 

You know when you wish you'd never asked something

 

its been mentioned here before by sonic, but yes managed is by far the best scenario in your circumstances. You can offset the cost of the install and the service by explaining to the client that they get al the benefits of a server at their own premises, vpn access, OWA etc but with the safety of it being managed 24/7...should be an easy sell to make and alleviates you the hassle of learning, understanding, setting up their own server.

just an idea

 

I've set this up for some of my clients on numerous occasions.
Exchange is reasonably easy to install and configure.
If remote users are just wanting access to email then Outlook web access is the tool for you. Its installed automatically when you install exchange.

Make sure you open https ports on your router and point them to the server in question.

If users are wanting to run apps remotely then the quickest and easiest way to do this is via MS built in Routing and remote access and a terminal services server.

I have a client that's a large mechanical and electrical design company. They have 100 users spread between 2 offices (Doncaster and Leeds). The remote access that I have setup is for around 200 users that are based on building sites country wide.

Each of the two offices has its own terminal services servers and the remote users on the sites log onto their respective office Terminal services server. The VPN is over broadband connections setup on site. I've even had to use satelite links on occasion but they were painfuly slow but sometimes necessary due to lack of broadband.

It has worked very well for nearly 5 years now.

 

SBS Standard offers Exchange at a great price for smaller businesses. Few downsides like limited options on the domain configuration but for a single server site it's not a problem IMO.

It's a POP to install SBS via the Wizards and Management console.

 

Thanks for all your help, plenty to think about.

 

Yep SBS Premium will also give you ISA Server too and setting up the VPN side is an absolute doddle

David

One thing I forgot to mention about Exchange 2007 if you are going to install it

Dont install NNTP & SMTP services like you had to for the old Exchange 2003, 2007 throws a wobbly if they are installed

 

Cheers

 

Exchange can be an absolute bear if all goes a bit Pete Tong, especially if you are learning it on the fly. Seriously, if you've got a small outfit, go with the outsourced solution.

 

I guess the downside of an outsourced solution is both cost when you start having lots of mail boxes, and bandwidth. In a lot of companies people mail each other. If you have the exchange server on the LAN, then that will reduce a lot of WAN traffic.

I talk hypothetically, as I have yet to install an exchange server. Something I plan on doing in the next few months though

 

Let me know how you get on Luminous. I haven't built my home sevrer yet to test anything out.

 

If your going to test it, try and stick with Exchange 2003 and not Exchange 2007 for the reasons mentioned above

and for a small company try and get hold of Small Business Server as its easier to setup if you havent set up that kind of thing before

 

Yep, I'd been looking at SBS 2003.

I do have experience with Standard 2003 server (though not as much as I'd like)

Cheers.