new email server config

[sieistganzfett]

Hi, I need to setup exchange server for email from external email addresses that are POP3/SMTP for multiple addresses that currently go right to office outlook on several computers. I need to set up a server with exchange to go store the email sent to those addresses first on exchange server at my company, which then distributes the email to the office outlook clients on different computers for those addresses. I never have done this config before and do not know where to get started. The server will be server 2003 with exchange 2003 installed. The internet we have will have static IP on the firewall's WAN port, and this mail server will also be static on network. 192.168.0.x How do I configure exchange to obtain the email from our external email source which saves all email, then reconfig the PC to get the email from the new mail server? Any links, documents, etc. that anyone has or can find would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[BornStar]

Let me get this straight, you have an offsite server that recieves all of your email, then you want your onsite Exchange server to pick up all of the email from that server? If that's the case, what's the reason for this?

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: BornStar18
Let me get this straight, you have an offsite server that recieves all of your email, then you want your onsite Exchange server to pick up all of the email from that server? If that's the case, what's the reason for this?

We do this (not offsite, but onsite) with BSD box. You can then filter/reject spam, some security stuff (BSD is imho, easier to secure and maintain over years then exchange) and not expose your exchange server to the world.

 

[nweaver]

but as a side not, we just have primary MX records for our domain pointing to our BSD box, and our exchange server only accepts mail from that machine.

 

[BornStar]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: BornStar18
Let me get this straight, you have an offsite server that recieves all of your email, then you want your onsite Exchange server to pick up all of the email from that server? If that's the case, what's the reason for this?

We do this (not offsite, but onsite) with BSD box. You can then filter/reject spam, some security stuff (BSD is imho, easier to secure and maintain over years then exchange) and not expose your exchange server to the world.

We do something similar to that. I just don't understand why you would have an internal mail server when you have an offsite server thats set to store. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't have a static IP but I would think it would be cheaper to get a static IP than pay the hosting costs. Setting up the forwarding and everything isn't too difficult, I just want to make sure I understand what he's asking before I make recommendations.

 

[spikespiegal]

The BSD box will need to be set up as a mail relay agent and forward mail to the Exchange box via it's internet address, which has a configuration option (somewhere) to allow mail from an external address without treating it an illegal relay. The Exchange box does not get mail - it's sent to it via the BSD box, and then users can Pop or use the Exchange client in outlook to get their mail.

What you're doing is really not that weird other than the BSD box being offsite. Any mail gateway/filter functions this way, and I prefer to have an external server filter junk and virus's and simply bounce it to the main mail server. This is basically all that SMTP does anyways. You just need to tell the BSD box to forward that mail to your Exchnage box, then tell the Exchange box the BSD box is an allowed relay.

If the BSD box can't forward mail via SMTP to the Exchange server, then it's something strange and I'm outta here.

 

[sieistganzfett]

its not our company's sever, the external mail server is email provided by our webhosting company. we fill it up a lot, and my boss is anti-deleting things from the server, so it stays in both outlook, and on that server, then it runs out of space for accounts and he bites the bullet and allows me to remove the server version, just keeping the outlook versions of the emails. Basically what he wants is the onsite exchange server to just get the mail from that external source and save it without restrictions on mailbox size... we do not have anything to but the email info such as the username, password, address, pop3, smtp which we have configured in outlook for the email addresses we use. I have set up internal email before with exchange, but never to get it to obtain email from an external server. I have no way to set up anything on the external sever since it is not ours. I can only set up stuff internally at our site and all i have is what the outlook settings are.

so how do i do this then if i cant configure the other mail server?

 

[RebateMonger]

Exchange 2003 comes with a built-in POP connector service. You enable it as a Service on Server 2003 or 2000, point it to a list of ISP/account/passwords, and it goes and grabs the POP email periodically and dumps it into the appropriate User's Exchange Mailbox.

Unless you have Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition, you WILL have mailbox size limitations, though. Exchange 2003 Standard Edition SP2 is limited to 75GB of total mail in each mail store.

 

[nweaver]

the reason to use a mail relay BSD/linux box (think we have one on openbsd, one on suse9 as a backup) with exchange is this: I can set a specific allow inbound list, based on email address. I can disallow aol.com, but allow user1@aol.com. Exchange can olny filter by domain, not by user address. Our exchange server ONLY accepts mail from that machine, where a large filterig takes place.

 

[lotus503]

Pop connector for a coupel domains, Pop Weasel is good for several different pop accounts accross multiple domains

 

[sieistganzfett]

thanks for the input everyone, im going to try out RebateMonger's idea to enable the pop3 connector service. once enabled where do i point it? where do i put the list? is there a site on this?

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Exchange 2003 comes with a built-in POP connector service. You enable it as a Service on Server 2003 or 2000, point it to a list of ISP/account/passwords, and it goes and grabs the POP email periodically and dumps it into the appropriate User's Exchange Mailbox.

Unless you have Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition, you WILL have mailbox size limitations, though. Exchange 2003 Standard Edition SP2 is limited to 75GB of total mail in each mail store.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: sieistganzfett
thanks for the input everyone, im going to try out RebateMonger's idea to enable the pop3 connector service. once enabled where do i point it? where do i put the list? is there a site on this?

Once the POP3 Connector Manager is STARTED, it'll appear in the Exchange System Manager under "Connectors". Configuration is fairly self-explanatory.

If you have connection issues with the external POP servers, enable error logging in the POP3 Connector Manager and look at the errors in the Application Event Log on your Server. Don't forget to turn logging off when your are done with it. It'll generate a LOT of log messages.