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I've been tasked with getting a Microsoft Exchange server set up here at my job.

Here's what I need the end result to be:

- DHCP Handled by our SonicWALL appliance
- Our existing DNS servers used
- Every employee has an Exchange email account
- The Exchange emails are ONLY internal, mail is received to the Exchange server from our existing email server.
- Emails sent from the Exchange account to an external email address have the 'Reply-To' set as the external email address rather than the Exchange email address.
- Exchange server only has an internal IP (192.168.XX.XX)

I just did a fresh install of Windows Small Business Server 2008, about to begin configuring. I've been unsuccessful with previous installations - I cannot figure out how to use the SonicWALL for DHCP and our existing DNS servers. Then there's the email routing that I can't grasp either.

My boss wants this done ASAP, if anyone can help or direct me to a good place to find this info, it will be MUCH appreciated!

Jason Berg
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mistiry
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2 Answers2

4

Starting from the outside in.

DNS
Active Directory will need Dynamic DNS of some kind. If your existing DNS servers can't do that, then you'll need to use different DNS servers for just the AD domain itself. This is actually a pretty common config. The DNS domain used by Active Directory is something else than where you receive your mail (example: if you're at example.com, set up your AD to run in internal.example.com). All other DNS remains as is.

DNS mailrouting
You want to keep the MX record for your external domain (example.com) pointing at your existing mailer. That doesn't change. It's the config on your existing mailer that'll have to change.

Mailer change
Depending on what's running on that existing mailer, you will have to configure it to forward all mail destined for your domain to your Exchange system. This is a pretty common config as well, as many anti-virus/anti-spam appliances require this kind of setup. It's pretty simple to set up in most smart mailers.

Setting up Exchange: mail domains
Once you get Exchange installed, you've set up your mail box databases and suchlike, it's time to set up the policies that determine the email addresses that get passed out. In Exchange Console, go to Organization Config -> Hub Transport -> Accepted Domains tab. Make sure that your doman is in this list, and set to default. Then on the E-mail Addresses tab for Hub Transport, right click on Default Policy and go to Edit. Following this wizard will let you set up what email addresses Exchange assigns to users by default. This is where the choice of firstname.lastname@example.com vs accountname@example.com gets made.

Setting up Exchange: outbound routing
You didn't specify if you wanted all outbound email to be sent via your existing mailer. Just in case, this is how you'd set that up. Under Organization Config -> Hub Transport will be a tab for "Send Connectors". One of those policies will have "to internet" in it (I don't know what the policies look like on SBS so I can't be certain what it is). Go to Properties on that, then the Network tab. Click the radio button for "Route mail through the following smart hosts", and enter the address info for your existing mailer.

This will set up Exchange to it uses your external address for all email, internal and external. It's simpler this way, and is a very, very common config.

sysadmin1138
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  • Really, this is a great top notch answer. It just doesn't fit SBS. The basic rule of SBS is if it can be done with a wizard, do it with a wizard. Most of these steps can be accomplished with SBS wizards so doing them manually could break some of the functionality or scripts of SBS. – Jason Berg Aug 11 '10 at 16:39
  • I haven't seen SBS, so I was extemporizing wildly :) – sysadmin1138 Aug 11 '10 at 17:13
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I'm going to go ahead and recommend against sysadmin1138's answer. It's a great answer, but not for SBS. Here's what you want to do:

  1. Setup DHCP. You can do this one of two ways. The first way is to have the server handle DHCP. This would be best. if you don't want to do this, configure your Sonicwall to hand out the IP address of your server as the DNS server.
  2. Setup DNS. Go into the properties of your DNS server, click on the forwarders tab, and insert your current DNS servers in there.
  3. Run the connect to internet wizard in the SBS console. Specify your external domain for your email addresses.
  4. Create all your user accounts in the SBS console User and Groups tab
  5. Setup POP3 connector. Under the SBS console, click on Network, then the connectivity tab. Then click on POP3 connector and view properties. This is where you setup your SBS server to grab email from your current mail server

And that's it. SBS will take care of everything else for you. You'll now be able to send and receive email without modifying your current mail flow.

Jason Berg
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