Mail Server

[[PS]Riddler]

Right then, at work we have just recived a nice spinky copy of Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (Also have Standard edition) from our Action Pack Subscription, at the moment we have Small Business Server 2000 installed but that server cannot handle all the mails that we are sending and reciving each day and run its other programs at the same time.... sooooo.... I was wondering what would be the best way to set up Exchange (ohh we also got a copy of exchange through the action pack) We can either set Exchange to recive the mails from a POP3 Account (catch-all) and then distribute them to the local users, or i can set up the server to be its own POP3 server and SMTP server, just a little info, we recive about... 60 emails every 15 mins (thats when our server searches for new mail), so it gets rather hammerd along with running our client database software!

 

[Xavier]

60 mails every 15 minutes is NOTHING, heh - that's 240 mails per hour! exchange servers can generally take hundreds of times that volume, that's what they're designed to do.

I've got some bad news for you too. That copy of Small Business Server, which uses a POP3 connector to collect and deliver the mail to exchange is t3h sheshul... Standalone builds of Exchange do not and will not collect the contents of a POP mailbox as for the method of delivery you describe, it's something microsoft add to SBS because they appreciate that most small companies who would use such a server app don't have fixed connectivity, and the minute you move away from that they'll want you to cough up for separate server licenses...

So you've a couple of choices, either get a fixed DSL line such as Zen, and have your email domains MX record repointed at that IP (and thus the exchange server, after a bit of port forwarding at the router) and handle your mail that way with a simple recipient policy under Exchange 2003 (we run it on TechNation and love it to bits, especially OWA), or leave email on the SBS server and move one of the other services which is fighting for resources and isn't a part of your SBS install onto the separate machine.

Incidentally, within the LAN why would you want it to be a POP/SMTP server? sure you'll want it to relay outbound mail, but internally you should be using exchange as exchange... and as it's exchange 2003 people won't even need POP offsite, as it supports exchange connectivity over HTTP/HTTPS to outlook clients and offers full outlook functionality over OWA...

Xav