New Exchange 2003 Installation

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Rachel - 26 Oct 2004 19:39 GMT

We are looking at the possibility of setting up an inhouse Email server
(Exchange 2003) instead of using our current configuration which is
outsourcing to an ASP. I am doing some research to determine what would need
to be done, the costs and the configuration of everything.

We will be using an Exchange 2003 running on Windows 2003. We will have
about 250-300 users. We will want the capability of users to access mail
while in the office as well as offsite via webmail, mobile phones, etc. What
type of server config. would I need to do this?

I have read so much on front-end/back-end server configurations. Is this
something I would need for my environment or can I just use ONE back-end
server?

Any information or direction would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Rachel

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MartinHTN - 28 Oct 2004 22:42 GMT

Rachel:

Exchange 2003 comes with both Outlook Web Access (webmail) and Outlook
Mobile Access for mobile devices. For security and performance reasons, it's
not recommended that users from outside access the Exchange server directly,
hence the FE/BE configuration. The FE server usually sits in the DMZ and
takes a lot of the processing off the BE server, allowing it to service
internal clients without being bogged down by servicing Internet-based
users. If you absolutely cannot fit another server into your budget to use
as a FE server, then it is possible to use the BE server to service Internet
clients, but this is a big security risk. Since the FE server won't actually
store any user mailboxes, it won't need much hard drive space, however,
depending on how many of your clients will be accessing the FE server, it
should have adequate processor and memory, so the FE server should cost less
than the BE server in most cases.

I haven't used OWA much and OMA at all. There should be a few good articles
on Exchange Server 2003 Technical Documentation Library
(http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/library/default.mspx)
regarding your questions.

Regards,
Martin
MCSA: M

> We are looking at the possibility of setting up an inhouse Email server
> (Exchange 2003) instead of using our current configuration which is
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> Thank you.
> Rachel

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Al Mulnick - 29 Oct 2004 02:27 GMT

To take it a step further, you may want to do away with the FE server and
use an ISA server to publish those features to the internet. In that
library that Martin posted, check out the docs on Exchange and ISA for some
ideas of what you could do. None of those servers would likely have to be
all that large to handle the amount of users assuming they're average type
users (vs. sending large binary files around).

Al

> Rachel:
>
[quoted text clipped - 41 lines]
>> Thank you.
>> Rachel

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