Setting up e-mail server

jamieh

Hey all,

Could someone tell me whats the best way to set up a mail server.

I'm planning on buying a .ie domain from hosting365. Is this all i need to have to set up company e-mail addresses, eg. name@company.ie

Should I get Exchange Server 2006 or is Linux better. I would like to set up web access for users also. I know that Microsoft do a product called Outlook Web Access.....so Im guessing Exchange Server 2003 would be more suited to my needs!

Also, when I buy the domain how to I set up the mail server to get mail from the domain i bought???

DublinWriter

jamieh wrote:

Should I get Exchange Server 2006 or is Linux better. I would like to set up web access for users also. I know that Microsoft do a product called Outlook Web Access.....so Im guessing Exchange Server 2003 would be more suited to my needs!

If you're sticking to a Windows platform, this is your best bet:

http://www.argosoft.com/RootPages/MailServer/Default.aspx

Small, lightweight, cheap, robust. I've used it myself.

Exchange is a bit like using a 40-ton truck (with dodgy wheels) to go down to the shop to pick up a sliced-pan.

masteroftherealm

have you considered looking into SBServer. That way u get OS and Exchange all rolled into an easy to use easy to admin system.
Might be overkill if u just want plain email tho.

Saruman

Mdaemon might be a good idea.
www.mdaemon.com
Its easy to use.

JohnnieM

Check out Blacknight.ie... they have a complete package e mail hosting .ie domains for F all..they the business

jamieh

Thanks for the replies lads.

I have a site license so as far as I know I already have a license for Exchange 2003. I'm already running Server 2003 so SBS isn't an option.

Is Exchange very complicated.....am I letting myself in for a shock or is it easy enough to configure??

I'd be willing to set up a seperate linux server.....is there any advantage of using linux as a mail server as opposed to microsoft based??

masteroftherealm

Its free and more secure vs. Expensive and less secure

DublinWriter

jamieh wrote:

Is Exchange very complicated.....am I letting myself in for a shock or is it easy enough to configure??

It can be, but give it a lash anyways. It's all about learning things the hard way.

The main problem with Exchange I find is that these days it's so tied in with Microsoft's Active-Directory technology and it almost acts like an extension of the O/S.

Personally, I prefare my server processes to be more 'discreet' and less dependant on the underlaying O/S.

Saruman

best practice with exchange.. and i have very limited experience with it is for you to have a public ip address's and have one mapped to your server. Then have your mail provider send all SMTP to that public IP address. Its easier than playing around with pop connectors etc.

wandererz

First things first:

How many users have you got??

jamieh

wandererz wrote:

First things first:

How many users have you got??

300.....ish!!

seamus

Exchange is complicated, but if you're running an MS-Heavy shop (Domain, Active Directory, MS Office, etc) then it can be an administrative dream if set up correctly.

For instance, I've just started porting users over to it. A simple addition to logon scripts means that any user can move to another machine, log in and open Outlook, and their mail is already configured for them. You can in theory do the same with a standard POP server, but if you're using Outlook then there's messing with PST files and POP passwords etc.

That doesn't mean I'm advocating Exchange. For me, it's a massive step up from the POS that was in place previously, so I'm enjoying it.

I've tinkered with www.hmailserver.com before. I'd recommend it.

An MS site licence doesn't give you free reign to install whatever the hell you want. You still need to purchase licences for each piece of software you install - in Exchange's case, the Exchange licence and a licence for each user.

wandererz

jamieh wrote:

300.....ish!!

In that case you will soon find that you/your users have rather complex and/or more intensive requirements.

If you already have a microsoft infrastructure i would definately recommend going with Exchange.

As good as mDaemon & the likes are, i would not recommend it for a user-base of that size.

Orion

seamus wrote:

Exchange is complicated, but if you're running an MS-Heavy shop (Domain, Active Directory, MS Office, etc) then it can be an administrative dream if set up correctly.

I agree completely. Exchange works very well but you need to know what you're doing. And the way it ties in with AD is excellent.

For instance, I've just started porting users over to it. A simple addition to logon scripts means that any user can move to another machine, log in and open Outlook, and their mail is already configured for them.

huh? Nothing to do with login scripts - all to do with roaming profiles and GPO.

An MS site licence doesn't give you free reign to install whatever the hell you want. You still need to purchase licences for each piece of software you install - in Exchange's case, the Exchange licence and a licence for each user.

There's different options for Exchange. The smaller version (iirc) allows unlimited users but limits the size of the Information Store (mailboxes + public folders) to 15 or 16Gb. With 300 users that's fine as long as you limit mailbox size. This is to be encouraged anyway for admin reasons. Limit the mailboxes to 50Mb and encourage your users to archive off mails. The psts are flat files then and much easier to backup.

seamus

Macros42 wrote:

huh? Nothing to do with login scripts - all to do with roaming profiles and GPO.

Ugh. I steer clear of roaming profiles. Mainly because people seem intent on saving 5GB files into My Documents.
Curious to know how you configure mail settings via GPO though.

Capt'n Midnight

jamieh wrote:

Thanks for the replies lads.

I have a site license so as far as I know I already have a license for Exchange 2003. I'm already running Server 2003 so SBS isn't an option.

Is Exchange very complicated.....am I letting myself in for a shock or is it easy enough to configure??

I'd be willing to set up a seperate linux server.....is there any advantage of using linux as a mail server as opposed to microsoft based??

If you know windows MDaemon is one to go for. Easy to use, Easy to recover from problems, emails are stored in a raw format so well nigh impossible to corrupt all emails at the same time, you can install it on a spare workstation and change the IP in no time. And it's got web access and rules for automating replies on mailing lists. And since emails are stored raw, you can search them by right clicking on the folder. All settings are very visible. You can use almost any email client - many are free. It has it's own web client.

Exchange is for workflow and delegates and all the fancy stuff. It also does email. All your eggs are in one basket. If there are problems resoultion may take time. Until service pack 1 on 2003 when using the standard version you were restricted to 16GB total for all emails/public folders/calanders/generated web access views - this was a hard coded limit - mentioning it because lots of other niggles still remain to be sorted. LOTS of settings are hidden, and many are non-obvious, it uses active directory so you have to drill down a lot to get advanced features working. Like others have said Exchange is a lot better than it used to be (you can now attempt to recover mailboxes without having to take the server offline and swapping edb files) and has some nice features, but if only used for email is overpriced and, overcomplicated.
Even if you have a license for exchange server you still need CALs for each user which include Outlook. Check the costs of these - though if you are running SBS you may already have them. But with 300 users, even if they all have copies of microsoft office you still need to buy CAL's to connect to the server. 300 users means you are looking at enterprise exchange with the additional cost of windows enterprise. Though ONE good feature in exchange is that you can use multiple servers and spread the users across them, not much point if they are all in the same area. However, microsoft would like you to buy several exchange servers and have different roles for them.

If you use it get Exmerge and run it often - this will dump the edb files to a separate pst for each mailbox, if you select and save the option to not overwrite existing emails the Exmerge runs much faster on subsequent updates. This will enable you to produce PST's if/when exchange has a problem or someone deletes emails/or accounts, without having to go through the pain and fear of messing with edb files.

http://www.altn.com - download the free trial and set it up on a workstation, play around with it for an hour. Almost every setting is in a text file and you can import user lists as text files for new users.
MDaemon Pro 500 User $1,510.00

seamus

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

It also does email.

That would actually be a good slogan for an MS ad campaign

Orion

seamus wrote:

Ugh. I steer clear of roaming profiles. Mainly because people seem intent on saving 5GB files into My Documents.
Curious to know how you configure mail settings via GPO though.

Roaming profiles if implemented properly work very well. Use folder redirection (this is the GPO bit) for My Documents and Application Data folders and exclude those folders along with the "Temporary Internet Files" folder from roaming. Average size of the profile in our job is about 10mb. This way the users' My Docs folders are available from any pc and the roamimg profiles are kept to a minimum.

[edit]Out of curiousity - what's the script you use for client config for Exchange?[/edit]

Capt'n Midnight

seamus wrote:

Curious to know how you configure mail settings via GPO though.

I must dig up the profile tool can't remember the name, but you just use a batch file with %username% to put in all the settings, the trick is to have the user name the same as the email address.


BTW: AFAIK Microsoft don't do site licenses, you pay for each and every usage of each and every product and each and every thing it can connect to - using a terminal server to email someone an Access dB from a folder requires many different licenses. Exceptions - A few products like SQL unlimited connections (if licensed per processor) but concurrent usage is rare unless you only have one server. I think even Boeing are no longer on the $50 per pc license deal they made.

masteroftherealm

Academic INstitutions Still get site licenses. But their the only exceptions afaik.

jamieh

masteroftherealm wrote:

Academic INstitutions Still get site licenses. But their the only exceptions afaik.

I'm working for a school and hows I have a site license.

I forgot to mention even tho there is 300 users, there is only 80-100 workstations. The workstations are used during computer classes, nightclasses, etc.

Would I still need a 300 user license or would a 100 user license do? ie......is the license calculated on a per workstation or per e-mail address basis??

zilog_jones

AFAIK the CALs work per access at any one time, so if there's only the possibility of there being a max of 100 people accessing Exchange at once, then you only need 100 CALs.

You could probably get away with even less than that, as even if 100 people are using Outlook at once, the chance of all 100 accessing the server at the exact same time is pretty slim. That and the License Logging Service is so shíte at doing its job, that there's a Microsoft KB article showing how to turn it off - so technically you can get away with feck all licenses

seamus

Macros42 wrote:

Roaming profiles if implemented properly work very well. Use folder redirection (this is the GPO bit) for My Documents and Application Data folders and exclude those folders along with the "Temporary Internet Files" folder from roaming. Average size of the profile in our job is about 10mb. This way the users' My Docs folders are available from any pc and the roamimg profiles are kept to a minimum.

Yeah, too much work
Nah it's just not feasible in my place at the moment. Still weeding out people who aren't on domain logons

[edit]Out of curiousity - what's the script you use for client config for Exchange?[/edit]

It's a small simple VB script I wrote. You use the Office Custom Installation tool to generate a .prf file - this is a text file which contains the settings for Outlook. When the user logs on, the script then checks to see if mail is already configured. If it is, it does nothing. If it's not, it sets a registry key that tells Outlook to use the .prf file when it first starts up.
It's more of a hack than anything - the custom installation tool allows you to include this .prf file as part of the default install, but this is no use when all the clients already have office installed.

I'm fairly new to the whole domainwide configuration and logon scripts thing, so it's always good to hear how other people do things