SBS, Mail, ISP, DDNS 2

[rvnguy]

I am trying to get the correct settings laid out before starting on this.

Situation: SBS, 2 NICS, ISA2004, Exchange.

Mail currently hosted with website hosting provider.
Currently client POP3 retreival, SMTP send.

This is an established company.com site and needs to maintain email addresses as the same and website continues to be hosted.

SBS is not a static IP. Can obtain DDNS service for mail delivery.

Have searched for other posts and noted that one must use the CEICW or pay the price as SBS does not respond well to manually setting things. ergo the problem.

This is what I believe that I end up with:

company.com Host
company.local SBS
company.ddns.com ddns used to locate dynamic IP of SBS

I am thinking that I can use the hosts 'forward email to domain' option to redirect all mail sent to the company.com to the SBS Exchange via the ddns.
In CEICW I am fairly sure that I select these options:
E-Mail Delivery:
Select Forward all e-mail to e-mail server at your ISP.
E-Mail Retrieval:
Select Use Exchange and E-mail is delivered directly to my server options

Question: What does the CEICW do with this entry?
E-Mail domain page:
Email Domain Name company.com

Is this what should be entered here? Or should it be an address on the SBS Box? Owing to the meager explanation I cannot be positive what SBS will do with this entry.

Reality check, am I on the correct track?

I want to refrain from using the POP3 Connector but do want to convert to having all mail run through the Exchange Server section of SBS.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[58sniper]

If you have a dynamic address, there are other things to worry about. You won't be able to successfully send email out from that server without running into a problem with destinations bouncing it because you have a dynamic address. Also, you won't be able to get a reverse DNS entry, further causing delivery problems.

Pat Richard, MCSE(2) MCSA:Messaging, CNA(2)

 

[rvnguy]

58sniper,

Thanks, I am aware of that with ddns but I thought that using

E-Mail Delivery:
Select Forward all e-mail to e-mail server at your ISP.

would mitigate this as the mail will actually be delivered via the hosts mail & DNS. Am I incorrect or did you over look this??



rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[rvnguy]

I was hoping for additional comments so am posting this to bring back to the top.

Thanks

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[ShackDaddy]

In Exchange on your SBS server, you need to go into the SMTP Virtual Server properties and configure your ISP's mailserver to be a smarthost, handling delivery of all outbound mail for you. This help you avoid many (but not quite all) of the problems of not having an RDNS.

I wouldn't use the "forward all email" option at your host. I would have it keep the mail there in a POP3 mailbox and then use the SBS POP3 connector on your SBS server to retrieve the mail for you and distribute it to local mailboxes on your server.

Make sure you add your proper email domain (not domain.local) to the Recipient Policy configuration on your server. It will then adjust your user email addresses automatically to be accurate.

If I were you, I'd buy a router/firewall (Linksys, Watchguard, SonicWall, whatever) to put in front of your server so that the outside NIC of your server can have a static IP, even if it's in the private range. That avoids some of the significant problems you'll face in the SBS configuration. Then forward ports as needed to the ISA interface and continue to filter as needed.

Shackdaddy

 

[58sniper]

The problem with the SBS POP3 connector is that the smallest interval you can specify for retrieval is 15 minutes. In most businesses, that's not acceptable. If that's the case, you might have to look at 3rd party solutions, like GFI's Mail Essentials.

Pat Richard, MCSE(2) MCSA:Messaging, CNA(2)

 

[rvnguy]

Shackdaddy
Thank You for your comments. I have consumed much on the POP3 connector and there has been much in the way of mixed results. Most recommend not using it except as a last resort. Differing from your advice, but I appreciate your comment on not using the "forward all email" option could you expand on your feelings or experience with this approach. I know that I could alter the a & MX records and not even include the Host for delivery but just thought that the FAEmail option would allow them to first hit the host then be forwarded.

Could you also expand upon what you are refering to as a "proper email domain"? Again, I am not sure what SBS does with all this being co-located on one box. I could treat it as a separate unit and I think I can name the Exchange Server with a unique name but I don't want to break anything that SBS might be trying to configure.

Do you know if the CEICW step below sets up the smart host?
E-Mail Delivery:
Select Forward all e-mail to e-mail server at your ISP.

I can manually config all of this but also had read that one should use the CEICW for these settings. But I have not been able to determine/find documentation on exactly what it actually does.

There is a VPN router that will exist between the Cable connection and the SBS box's #2 NIC.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[ShackDaddy]

You are right. The CEICW sets up the smart host for you.

By "proper" I just meant that if you are using the '.local' suffix for your internal domain, you don't want to configure your mail server to use that.

I primarily use the POP3 connector as one part of a phased migration, because, yes, it tends to be tempermental, and in some situations, just not work at all.

As far as having things forwarded from the MX host... Here's what I do for my clients: I set up the domain public DNS with ZoneEdit's DNS service. I point the MX at the SBS server's public IP and forward port 25 on my firewall to the server. And I pay ZoneEdit $10/year to have MailBackup for the domain, so that if my server is offline, ZoneEdit holds it in queue until I either repoint the MX to a live server, or my server comes back online. It's been very handy and reliable.

Hope I answered most of your questions...it's pretty late!

ShackDaddy

 

[rvnguy]

ShackDaddy,

Thanks for the ZoneEdit lead....

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all