Email Setup

Johnniep

Hey all,

Hoping someone out there can point me in the right direction. I have set up a Small Business Server 2003 box, and am currently pulling down emails using the pop connector, but this only connects every 15mins to download the email. I know there is a better way of doing this and am looking for a bit of advice.

We are running SBS2003, with exchange 2003, with a fixed IP address and have a domain (.ie) hosted by blacknight. How do I get it setup so that email is routed directly to exchange? Can I do it all on the server or do I need to get blacknight to change something?

Really appreciate your help!

John

Hagar

Can you change the time from 15 mins to say 5 mins?
Simple change, minimum disruption.

misterq

I wrote this article many moons ago when I was working for this company:
http://www.cloch.com/MS_Exchange_Server_Setup-up.html

The details are the same but I would advise what Hagar suggested, just increasing the polling time rather than routing mail directly to your server. WAY less hassle!

monkey tennis

Assuming Blacknight manage your DNS records, you'll need to get them to change your primary MX to point to your exchange server. I'd recommend having a secondary record pointing to your Blacknight-hosted mail server, in case you ever have problems with your internet connection.

You should consider the implications of hosting your own mail server very carefully, particularly if your business relies on email, and also particularly if Blacknight are doing any filtering for you.

steve-hosting36

Local mail servers are ideal if you are frequently moving large attachements and files around between users at your domain, otherwise outsourcing the email is always a better option.

Your current pop connector is a perfect solution, just shorten the window to 5 or 10 minutes.

You can set the server as primary MX, so all mail is routed directly to your local server via SMTP, just, as suggested, ensure your host sets up a secondary MX and configures their mail server to spool mail for your if for any reason it's offline (even for a reboot, or a patch, etc).

ob

15 minutes is the minimum polling time the pop3 connector in SBS 2003 can be configured for. Anything less and you'll need a third party application to do this.