Can you use SpamAssassin with MS Exchange?

[edmicman]

We might be moving from our debian mail server to Exchange soon, but one of the greatest drawbacks would be losing our existing SA filter. Can SpamAssassin be used with Exchange? Would it be installed on the same server, or would you have to set up a separate linux box with scans the mail and then sends it on to Exchange? Any info or links would be great!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Not sure, but a lot of places that use exchange have a real mailserver on the outside that forwards all the mail to the exchange server.

 

[edmicman]

ahhhhh - so the mail server still handles the email, but then just forwards it to Exchange? I thought Exchange had to be the primary "mail server" though? if theres an external mail server, can you still use imap and such to allow spamassasin to learn from its spam?

 

[zodder]

He's describing a front end server. Most people recommend having one in order to keep the Exchange server off the DMZ. As far as killing spam, I work for a non-profit and I've found that IMF does a pretty decent job for the users. They do have to do some blacklisting at the client level and it does require Outlook 2003 to run at the its best, but you get free CALs for all Outlook 2003 installs if you buy Exchange 2003. So it's actually a great way to upgrade your clients for free as well. It's not perfect, but as a free solution, MS seems to be supporting it well and it's been effective for my agency.

 

[edmicman]

Sorry, what's IMF? I'm not familiar with that. I can just say that SpamAssassin has been *amazing*. Does anyone know of any online documentation in setting up a front end server or whatnot to work with Exchange? I'm still not clear how that all works....are you essentially running two mail servers then? Or is the front end server just sort of a forwarding service?