Exchange Server

[joel.mrtn1]

Anyone know anything about hosting your own email on exchange server 2003? We own a domain (example.com) and have small business server 2003 with exchange server built in. We have cable internet with a dynamic ip address. The modem is hooked up to a switch which every computer is plugged into including the server. The server is acting as the domain controller and I want to use it as a mail server also. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks!

[prochlea]

If I were you, I'd look into Google Apps Standard. You get alot of the benefits of an exchange server, with almost no work... Here's a little thing about the benefits of google over your own exchange server.

We're running it, and it works great.

[FlamHappy]

You're going to need a static at the very least.
You will likely need a block of addresses. One for your router and one for the cable modem. - I have had less than stellar fortunes forwarding the correct ports (25 and 110) inside the cable modems and prefer to use a off the shelf router to do that.

Here, comcast provides the cable internet services. And those sharks require replacement of your modem in order to use a static ip. On the other have Qwest who provides DSL around here does not.

The google apps are catching on like wildfire these days for many reasons however.

[blonborg]

Run, while you can. Seriously, based on the questions you're asking, I wouldn't setup an Exchange server (even though it is included in SBS 2003).

One of my duties on my day job, is managing an Exchange 2003 server.

In addition to the normal upkeep on it, one needs to factor in antivirus and antispam solutions. One can't use the typical antivirus software - you need something that can see into the Exchange databases. While Outlook has a spam filter, you'd probably want something that filters it before it gets into the user's mailbox (either at the server level), or possibly before it gets to the Exchange server. What backup software do you use? NTbackup will work with Exchange, but if you're using another product, you'll need one that knows how to communicate with Exchange.

I'm the IT guy (unpaid) for my church and while we use Outlook 2003, I set them up to do POP3/SMTP with a webhosting company. While we loose some functionality by not running our own Exchange server, it's one big headache I don't have to worry about.

Bill

[rkresge]

You can use Exchange Server 2003 for email, but unless you have a static public IP address (as mentioned in other posts) it's EXTREMELY challenging. You need either the static IP address, or an external mail hosting/forwarding service.

Also note that Exchange Server 2003 is very hard to secure (OK, I'm being nice - it's all but impossible to secure) in today's Internet environment. It's lacking a lot of security features that are really required in order to protect your system.

Roger

[cw4u]

Originally Posted by rkresge

Also note that Exchange Server 2003 is very hard to secure (OK, I'm being nice - it's all but impossible to secure) in today's Internet environment. It's lacking a lot of security features that are really required in order to protect your system.

I know I'm a little late on this thread, but I totally agree with this statement. It is very very hard to secure. We had several people hack into ours over the past year, so I just went to Google Apps for Non-Profits. Free service, free (and superior) spam filtering, and very good management tools. It took me about 10 hours to actually switch everything over. The majority of that time was updating the MX records.

I'd seriously consider Google Apps unless you want to spend tons of time with Exchange.

[hopeunited]

Hi There

Google Apps Standard gets my vote based on 3 key points:

Cost - FREE / No further server OS or hardware required
No Exchange server to maintain
Non technical staff can use it with ease

Need I say more!

Regards

[BrianAltenhofel]

Google Apps gets my vote.

I worked for three years in IT managing a network that included 100 PC's, 10 Macbooks, and 4 Windows servers (PDC, BDC/File, Exchange 2003, and Terminal Services). I do not recommend Exchange to anyone unless they absolutely need it. We were only using it for on-campus messaging and easy access to standard forms such as purchase order and quote analysis templates. It was set up to pull email off of an external server.

I try to avoid having to deal with Microsoft Licensing.

Also, you don't want to self host email. If your internet connection goes down for some strange reason and your MX records are pointed to your IP address, you won't get emails and the sender will be told that that email address or domain no longer exists. It's much better to use an outside service that has multiple layers of redundancy.

Go Google Apps and set up your mail clients to use IMAP.

[EricE]

Originally Posted by BrianAltenhofel

I do not recommend Exchange to anyone unless they absolutely need it. We were only using it for on-campus messaging and easy access to standard forms such as purchase order and quote analysis templates. It was set up to pull email off of an external server.

SBS 2003 and Exchange 2003 is a PITA and I wouldn't recommend it. However I recently upgraded us to SBS 2011 (which has Exchange 2010) - I really like it. And more importantly, my users are addicted to calendaring/scheduling and I haven't found a free hosted solution with equivalent calendar/scheduling support.

I try to avoid having to deal with Microsoft Licensing.

Microsoft Charity licensing is very reasonable. SBS 2011 Standard, 20 Client Access licenses (CALs) and a copy of MultiPoint Server Premium with 5 CALS was under $500. Got everything set up with HyperV and purring along. Find a good reseller and they will do the heavy lifting for you (we use Software One, but there are many who specialize in the Small/Medium Business (SMB)/non-profit space)

But even with all the improvements of SBS 2011, it's not for the faint of heart or non-IT inclined either As long as you never have a problem it will probably run out of the box with no issues - my churches SBS 2000 (!!) server ran for years with no care and feeding before I arrived, and only stopped when they had a total hardware failure.

Also, you don't want to self host email. If your internet connection goes down for some strange reason and your MX records are pointed to your IP address, you won't get emails and the sender will be told that that email address or domain no longer exists.

http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/enterprise-dns/backup-email/

$14 a year and works perfectly. Comcast has gone down a couple of times, mail failed over to DNS made easy and was delivered automatically within a couple of hours of Comcast coming back. It's not hard to plan for such scenarios, and luckily most internet services were designed with redundancy and fail-over capabilities in mind.

It's much better to use an outside service that has multiple layers of redundancy.

Unless it goes down. Or you can't get support for a free service in a timely manner (say someone hacks your account, a change gets made or anything else).

There are pro's and con's for any solution and no winner takes all. While I'm sure the free Google services are convenient, good luck getting support. Then again, if you don't have someone who can run something like SBS for you it's probably leaps and bounds better than a poorly run SBS that's a ticking time bomb waiting to happen

Go Google Apps and set up your mail clients to use IMAP.

While great for email, for us lack of integrated calendaring is the deal breaker for us. That and as Google pulls more and more crap I'm less and less a fan of them.

It is a great solution for those that need it - just not for us.

If you don't mind paying a few bucks, Small Business Server Essentials gives you a great mix of on-premise file sharing, client and account management, workstation backup (huge for us) and seamless integration with Microsoft's hosted solutions - which do provide calendaring and scheduling among other things. I dunno if they offer charity licensing on the email/office services since I have no problem running our SBS server, but it's an interesting question. If they do offer a discount and it's reasonable, I may switch us - hmm....