SMTP Email - options ??

deadl0ck

Hi all,
I am doing some charity for an Irish organisation and they want to get away from Eircom and their hosting prices.

I have already moved their Web Site, but they want to move their email also.

Now, for some reason (probably a good salesman), they have a Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) in their office which connects to Eircom to download their emails - the users then, in turn, connect to SBS to retrieve their email as needed.

To keep this as simple as possible for the users, ideally we should just point SBS at a different email provider (once we have updated the MX Records for the email, and created the users) and it should download the email from there...

The problem is (I've been told by the people who installed SBS) is that SBS needs incoming and outgoing SMTP email.
Standard Email has incoming POP3 and outgoing SMTP.

Does anybody know a reliable, cheap hosting company that offers 2 way SMTP ?

Or have I been misinformed ??

Any advice would be appreciated !!

Feelgood

deadl0ck wrote: »

I have already moved their Web Site, but they want to move their email also.

Did you move their hosting to the SBS server or to a hosting company?. Usually when you get a hosting package they include an SMTP / POP3 mail server free of charge with the hosting account??.

So if you are hosting www.abc.com with Mr Hosting Company, lets say (Letshost.ie). You mail server would be mail.abc.com. Then you just configure your Microsoft Exchange server on the Windows Small business server to point to mail.abc.com....

deadl0ck

I have moved their web hosting already to a hosting company, and they do provide email.
The problem is as follows :

The hosting company gives you the standard email -
Supported Incoming Mail Protocols: POP3, POP3S (SSL/TLS), IMAP, IMAPS (SSL/TLS)
Supported Outgoing Mail Protocols: SMTP, SMTPS (SSL/TLS)

Apparently, for SBS, you need SMTP on both Incoming AND Outgoing.

There is an SBS POP3 Connector, but it not supposed to be great : "Downloading mail from a POP account into Exchange Server in general is not a supported configuration."

That's why I'm looking for the SMTP Email provider....

Snowbat

Use the POP3 Connector in SBS?
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=885685

Depending on their needs, a Linux install with Fetchmail/Postfix/SpamAssassin/ClamAV/CourierIMAP/CourierPOP3 with webmin for administration may be a better and cheaper option.

deadl0ck

Yep - had seen the connector, but the company that supports SBS is very reluctant to install an add-on/connector.

I reckon they will charge for any extra work they have to do also.

That's why I'm looking at going the email hosting route....

dkane

Have you looked at Gmail for Organizations? Its dead simple to setup and you will never have to deal with it again.
You can use the companies own domain.
The end user will be able to add and remove users as they please without bothering you
They can use POP3/IMAP to download their email using Outlook etc if they so wish.
And they have a brilliant webmail solution when theyre away from their desk.
Best of all its free!

I know of a lot of large companies that are moving to gmail.

Saruman

Hang on what is the problem here? The support company simply told you how exchange works. YOU do not need to do anything with the email as its hosted on the exchange server. Just set the MX records to point to the public IP of the server.

Im assuming they were using SMTP mail already so when you transfer the domain you just make the MX record change and make sure there are NO mail services running on the sever (domain) as the SBS server is controlling the mail.

deadl0ck

They told me that SBS is reading from Eircom mail and then storing the email locally on itself.
SBS is not the actual email server - that's Eircom.

Maybe though SBS can be the actual email server like you said....

FruitLover

deadl0ck wrote: »

Maybe though SBS can be the actual email server like you said....

Yes, it can (specifically, Exchange is the email server). You could bypass the hosting mail entirely (not much point in using it unless they're providing spam filtering tbh) and point your MX records directly in to the SBS server.

I'd concur with the google apps mail suggestion though, tbh. It takes a lot of the administration work out of it.

One thing to be careful about is that Eircom can be slow about removing DNS records. What can happen is that although you've moved to a different DNS server, Eircom customers still see the old info stored on the Eircom servers, and consequently can't send mail to the domain anymore (it ends up in the Eircom POP account instead). Make sure you get the relevant form from Eircom before you start moving DNS records.

Saruman

Have seen that too with eircom.. also hostireland (nightmare). If changing from them, keep asking them to confirm that every scrap of record on their system to do with mail for that domain is deleted.
Check with the SBS server company as if they are using exchange properly, it is already administered by them through active directory so you will not need to do anything. If you move them on to google mail or something and move the email admin away from SBS/exchange then the sbs administrator might not be too happy if you feck up their admin ability so get back on to them and check with them.

humaxf1

if a SMTP setup is employed, will the emails just send anyway?

for the incoming emails you of course have to point the MX recs to the public IP for SMTP. i've never heard it been phrased as "incoming and outgoing smtp mail"

if SMTP is chosen, make sure that the hosting company has a decent backup in place in case the sbs goes offline for what ever reason

what's the gripe with sbs 2003? the POP3 connector does the job

mneylon

This does not have to be complicated.

If you have Exchange on the office server ensure that the ISP has provided a fixed IP and configured a PTR record.

You can then update the dns of the domain so that the MX record is pointing to the office server.

If your client was using Eircom for hosting and / or other service they have a disconnection / cancellation process that you can follow that will ensure that the pop accounts on their end are removed (the dns won't matter as the domain would only have been setup on their authorative ns anyway)

deadl0ck

OK - So the main issue is that it's me talking to the people who installed SBS.

The organisation has paid for SBS, but the prople who supplied/service the SBS server don't want to install a POP3 connector, and they have told me that it must be SMTP in and out.

Basically - they don't want to have to do any work !

I'm helping the organisation to move to a cheap host (I actually got it for them for free) for their website, and they want to be able to do the same for their email, but basically the company that look after SBS don't really want to do anything. This service company are the ones that told me I should be looking for a SMTP email provider, so they just have to chage the location where SBS pulls the emails - i.e. minimal effort from them.

As I'm not part of the organisation (I'm only doing the work for them for charity) I can't really force them to do any work....

I'd love to move to GMail, but this SBS provider has inserted themselves into the organisation, and I don't know enough about SBS to argue with them about it....if you know what I mean.

deadl0ck

So - can anyone tell me the different protocols that SBS can use to send and retrieve email from a 3rd party email provider (eg. Eircom)?

Is it only SMTP like I've been led to believe ?

Ghost Train

deadl0ck wrote: »

So - can anyone tell me the different protocols that SBS can use to send and retrieve email from a 3rd party email provider (eg. Eircom)?

Is it only SMTP like I've been led to believe ?

there are pop and imap connectors

the usual set up would be that sbs which includes exchange, would store the users mail boxes. The company has an external ip address, the mx record points to this address, and all mail to users comes into exchange and is stored in exchange mail boxes.

now the mail might be hosted by eircom, maybe filtered for spam?, stored if the companies mail server is down? but users probably don't have mailboxes on the eircom servers

eircom receives all mail, forwards it to the companies external ip address, then its distributed to users mailboxes. The sbs server send all mail from users out on the smtp connector mail1.eircom.net

if you don't want the mail to be hosted by eircom, you could point the mx record straight to the company external ip address, but you loose the mail hosting service

if you start setting up mail boxes for individual users with another provider, then you might have to reconfigure each users setting in sbs to point to their individual accounts on the external mail server... which is a lot of work, if its 4 or 5 addresses then maybe its ok. But you might as well just change their outlook settings on the client computers to point to the pop accounts then to reconfigure exchange, unless you need exchange to store all mail on-site

macrubicon

Ask Eircom to swap you to an MX only package.

This way your SBS box will be forwarded all mail in the first instance ( no connecting to Eircom's servers ) and your SBS will forward out via SMTP all outgoing mail.

Easy stuff for SBS once you get Eircom to make the change to the MX records.

Oh - you Will need a static IP assignment from Eircom for it to work.

Saruman

deadlock, exactly how are they collecting their mail currently? From that i can gather from your posts, exchange is already configured to receive SMTP traffic for their mail. This is how an exchange server "should" be configured. whatever domain hosts their mail sends it all to the exchange servers public IP address.
If this is how it is set up, then the support company is not being lazy here!! To set it up any other way would be madness to be honest.
Sorry deadlock (no offence) but it sounds like you are in way over your head here. Seriously, as i said already liaise with the support company and try to gain an understanding on how things work. They are the ones looking after the network so if/when you bollox up how the users get their mail it will be them that has to go in and fix it and they will be charging for their time.

As everyone posting here who knows exchange has said, all you should have to do is... well i and everyone else have told you what to do. Keep it simple and just change the MX records to what they should be to get to the exchange server.

My company looks after many networks but one is a certain Charity that was represented on failte towers recently. One of their offices in Ennis was recently bolloxed up by some local IT girl who went out to set up a new PC to be wireless (simple job). Since she had no idea about the network (and should not have been there) she disconnected the Firewall and re-configured the router and pretty much left them without internet and even if they had internet, no firewall means no VPN connection to head office. We now have to charge a days work to go down to Ennis and put everything back the way it was. Needless to say, head office was not happy the regional office let someone other than us on their network.
Im just saying, be careful or you could end up costing them money.

deadl0ck

if/when you bollox up how the users get their mail

Thanks for those encouraging words.
If I was that sort of person I wouldn't have started to look for advice here would I ?

Feelgood

deadl0ck wrote: »

Thanks for those encouraging words.
If I was that sort of person I wouldn't have started to look for advice here would I ?

Hehe, I have every faith in you deadlock...

Listen the POP3 connector in Exchange is grand. It does the job. What size is the company?. I take that if they are using Windows SBS its a small company?. Like 15 to 20 users?. If so the POP3 connector should do the job rightly.

Another way to do it would be to just setup the Outlook Clients as POP3/SMTP locally on their machines and force a backup of their PST files to the SBS server at say 8pm each day. Then run the nightly backup at 12pm or something. Again depends on the amount of users that you have....

deadl0ck

Thanks guys !
I'll talk to the guys who set up SBS again this week, and get more info.