Make a Exchange mail server

[blurredvision]

Office 365 sounds like such a perfect option for you, it's unfortunate it doesn't seem to be on the table.

 

[riahc3]

Ive repeated SEVERAL times in this thread that I perfectly understand what you guys are saying but not only do you ignore my posts but Ive repeated several times that Im not planning to deploy the 2003 version.

Would you guys feel better if I told you its for my home? Do I really have to "lie" like that or something?

 

[nisryus]

Riahc3, sorry that you felt this way. I think the others replied like they did because you gave them the impression that you still wanted to deploy Exchange (Well, as you said in http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2388871) even without any knowledge.

It does not matter what version of Exchange, you need to be prepared and know what it takes to setup and admin one.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

MS just gives out the trial versions now so it's pretty cheap to learn.

Yeah but unfortunately, trial versions only last a max of 180 days IIRC. For me, I have a domain and lab built that I use for testing all the time and it would be a pain to have to rebuild every six months. MS has made a lot of money off of the recommendations I've made based on my lab work alone. It isn't like I'm making money off of it or anything. I'll probably have to pony up for MSDN. The cheap version of MSDN includes the operating systems at least.

IMO, what MS should've done was 1) Raise the price of TechNet and 2) Require a Microsoft certification to have an active subscription. I think that would've solved many of the issues they have with it and it would've encouraged me to get this damn SharePoint 2013 certification.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Ive repeated SEVERAL times in this thread that I perfectly understand what you guys are saying but not only do you ignore my posts but Ive repeated several times that Im not planning to deploy the 2003 version.

Would you guys feel better if I told you its for my home? Do I really have to "lie" like that or something?

You can do whatever you want, but it is clear you have no experience with Exchange Server and aren't thinking through the ramifications clearly. Those of us with a lot of large enterprise experience are telling you the reasons you don't want to deploy it. The "business justifications" you cited for having an on-premise Exchange server can easily be solved without actually having an Exchange server on premise. Furthermore, you have not clearly stated that you do not plan to deploy Exchange 2003. Your phrasing indicates you are considering doing an Exchange 2003 deployment in the short term and then possibly upgrading to a more recent version later. That's why we've been clear that Exchange 2003 is no longer supported by MS. You're wasting your time deploying it, whether in a home lab or at work. Over the time I've been involved in Exchange, it had huge changes in Exchange 2000, again in Exchange 2007, and again in Exchange 2013. No need to even look at something 11 years old even if you may already own it.

If you're going to insist on Exchange, at least do it right -- get training, set up a lab, and at work, purchase new servers, software licenses (Windows 2012, Exchange), upgrade your domain, and ensure you have redundancy and offsite backup rotations. For an environment as small as yours, I'd consider virtualizing it in a Hyper-V environment and ensuring you take full VM backups for another layer of recovery. Also, you should look at upgrading your connectivity. You have a 384K upload speed from what I recall and that won't be adequate. A couple guys sending large attachments externally are going to choke that upload pipe badly.

 

[imagoon]

384k is barely adequate to run OWA and Activesync, ignoring EWS, OAB or anything in the entire UM suite.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

384k is barely adequate to run OWA and Activesync, ignoring EWS, OAB or anything in the entire UM suite.

Exactly.

 

[mvbighead]

Ive repeated SEVERAL times in this thread that I perfectly understand what you guys are saying but not only do you ignore my posts but Ive repeated several times that Im not planning to deploy the 2003 version.

Would you guys feel better if I told you its for my home? Do I really have to "lie" like that or something?

I'll followup with what Indy said...

You're NOT just looking at Exchange. You're looking at a number of other things.

To do the bare minimum, you need a new 2012 Server. I went out to Dell and configured an R210 Rack Server with 10K SCSI drives in RAID1 (focusing on cheap), a Quad Core, and 8GB of RAM. A minimum of $2400... not sure but it looks like it does not have redundant PSUs.

Add in Exchange license of $708 and per user and per devices CALs at $78/$48 for standard: https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/licensing/2013/02/exchange-license-prices-and-sa-grants

That's the BARE minimum, and is far less than ideal. Not sure of the user quantity, but figure $780 per 10 Outlook clients and $480 per 10 devices (smart phones), that'll add up quick.

So now, you lose power or Internet to your office... people on the other end (customers most likely) will get a return message undeliverable. This could lead to customers being discouraged with being unable to reach support, or perhaps lead them to leave you for a competitor. IE - Loss of business.

OR....

You could use a service provider who has redundant Internet links in excess of 100mbps both ways, a datacenter wide battery backup of all servers, generators/fuel cells for standby power in the event of a disaster (and contracts to provide fuel), backups solutions and recovery solutions already in place that can bring your users up at a different datacenter in the event of an outage, etc. etc. And all that on a per user cost.

Maybe the business you work for doesn't have the need for 99.999999% availability of their email, but it affects business when it is down in one way or another. Perhaps that doesn't matter, but if it were me I'd look to Office 365 or even Gmail for Business at $50 per user per year. They have the solutions in place to keep your email available... you won't unless you're spending 100s of thousands of dollars to build a datacenter...

 

[riahc3]

Riahc3, sorry that you felt this way. I think the others replied like they did because you gave them the impression that you still wanted to deploy Exchange (Well, as you said in http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2388871) even without any knowledge.

It does not matter what version of Exchange, you need to be prepared and know what it takes to setup and admin one.

I perfectly understand what everyone is saying. What bothers me is that I still want to deploy it (either way) and people are STILL telling me not to.

Its like a dodgy site that give you a 1000 popups and you have to close EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

I understand and thank everyone for their warnings but I still want to deploy it. People need to get ontopic and help me out deploying it.

If it is not clear, I want to deploy Exchange Server 2013 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 server. I apologize if I wasn't clear on it before.

Please, if you continue to post, post things that help me get started deploying this. Do not post offtopic posts such as "you need a lab" or "if your server goes down, you cant receive/send mail" etc. I understand all of it perfectly. The topic is deploying it, not should I or should I not.

Thank you and please stay on topic

 

[mvbighead]

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...+exchange+2013

 

[riahc3]

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...+exchange+2013

I actually skimmed thru a couple of ebooks before making this thread...

 

[blurredvision]

All you really need is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998636(v=exchg.150).aspx

You can skip most of those deployment articles since they don't apply. Just off the top of my head, these are the general steps you are going to take:

1. Install Server 2012 R2, then prepare it for Exchange, which involves installing the pre-requisite roles (IIS is one of the big ones) and then running the appropriate switches (/preparead, /preparedomain, /prepareschema).
2. Install Exchange, mailbox and CAS roles, since you're only using one server.
3. Configure firewall to direct email to the Exchange server.
4. Configure your MX record (or spam filter, if one is already in place) to direct email to your new Exchange server.
5. Adjust any settings that need to be adjusted for your environment, i.e. connectors, virtual directories, etc.

Honestly, if you have a single-domain, very simple environment, there shouldn't be too much configuration you need to do on the Exchange server after it's up and running. You can use testconnectivity.microsoft.com to test and make sure things like activesync, autodiscover and outlook anywhere are working.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Please, if you continue to post, post things that help me get started deploying this. Do not post offtopic posts such as "you need a lab" or "if your server goes down, you cant receive/send mail" etc. I understand all of it perfectly. The topic is deploying it, not should I or should I not.

Thank you and please stay on topic

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=exchange+2013+deployment

 

[Ketchup]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=exchange+2013+deployment

Ha, that was pretty good. I am going to have to save that one.

 

[thedosbox]

I perfectly understand what everyone is saying. What bothers me is that I still want to deploy it (either way) and people are STILL telling me not to.

That's because what you want, and what the business needs aren't necessarily the same. As you've failed to explain the business case for doing this, it's no surprise when people point this out.

Having said that, what are you expecting on a forum post? Detailed instructions are going to be much longer than anyone is interested in typing out, and plenty of references have been provided for reading material.

I suggest you go read them, then come back with specific questions.

 

[Ketchup]

...... How can I setup the Exchange server to handle my external and internal email?

Let's take this back to the beginning. Anandtech forums are here for people who want to help, and people who want to learn. The Anandtech forums are not for people who want to be told how to do something from start to finish.

As you have discovered, doing this will get you nothing more than criticism and the proper direction: doing something simpler, and will work just as well, like Office365 (but no hand-holding).

If you are looking to do something like this, do your homework, start working on planning it out, and ask specific questions along the way.

I think you will find these forums to be much more helpful when you show that you are putting forth the effort on your end. Let's be real here. You are getting paid for what you do. No one here is being paid to help you with this.

 

[imagoon]

Let's take this back to the beginning. Anandtech forums are here for people who want to help, and people who want to learn. The Anandtech forums are not for people who want to be told how to do something from start to finish.

As you have discovered, doing this will get you nothing more than criticism and the proper direction: doing something simpler, and will work just as well, like Office365 (but no hand-holding).

If you are looking to do something like this, do your homework, start working on planning it out, and ask specific questions along the way.

I think you will find these forums to be much more helpful when you show that you are putting forth the effort on your end. Let's be real here. You are getting paid for what you do. No one here is being paid to help you with this.

Here here.

I am sure there are people here that would be happy to take this up for you if were dead set on doing it. They would likely charge around $125 /hr to do it also. Your tiny design I could see a pro needed a few weeks for planning and prep prior to deployment. Actually installing and configuring Exchange is fairly far down the critical path for a roll out. There is a lot more early prep work to worry about like making sure your domain name isn't 'broken', things like "is port 25 even open from your ISP", static IP's, when you get to that point you have to start talking certificates and planning to put cash down on a certificate authority, etc, etc, etc.

Also with all your complaining, there is actually a lot of good information to get you started in this thread. To give you a scope, I am just completing an 1800 user Exchange migration as "technical lead" and "Project manager" that the initial planning stages started in August last year and some where in mid February began implementation and "full steam ahead" work. Granted everything left at this stage of the deployment is "new feature implementation" so the actual migration is completed task. Just removed the last Exchange 2007 server 3 weeks ago.

 

[debian0001]

To deploy a proper exchange environment with redundancy you are going to need
2 to 3 Domain Controllers
2 Exchange Front end servers
A Load balancer in front of the front end servers
Some sort of SPAM Filter
2 Backends in a DAG
Backup Power
External IP Address and a server running MS Forefront TMG and UAG for protection
Exchange based antivirus software
UCC Cert
Backup solution either by having another backend server with a LAG copy or an Enterprise backup suite like CommVault to backup the databases

 

[riahc3]

That's because what you want, and what the business needs aren't necessarily the same. As you've failed to explain the business case for doing this, it's no surprise when people point this out.

Having said that, what are you expecting on a forum post? Detailed instructions are going to be much longer than anyone is interested in typing out, and plenty of references have been provided for reading material.

I suggest you go read them, then come back with specific questions.

Honestly, I don't want this because I have no (personal) need for it. I have just been asked to do it.

Let's take this back to the beginning. Anandtech forums are here for people who want to help, and people who want to learn. The Anandtech forums are not for people who want to be told how to do something from start to finish.

As you have discovered, doing this will get you nothing more than criticism and the proper direction: doing something simpler, and will work just as well, like Office365 (but no hand-holding).

If you are looking to do something like this, do your homework, start working on planning it out, and ask specific questions along the way.

I think you will find these forums to be much more helpful when you show that you are putting forth the effort on your end. Let's be real here. You are getting paid for what you do. No one here is being paid to help you with this.

There have been 4-5 actual ontopic helpful posts in this thread. The rest have been just telling me not to do this after Ive stated MULTIPLE times that lets go ahead and do this.

Im already getting started installation, deploying and testing this out on ESXi.

 

[Ketchup]

.... Im already getting started installation, deploying and testing this out on ESXi.

Great. Let us know how it goes.

 

[riahc3]

Great. Let us know how it goes.

With all the rudeness that has been in this thread.....

 

[blurredvision]

With all the rudeness that has been in this thread.....

Then DON'T let us know how it goes and please ask the mods to close this thread.

 

[splat_ed]

Honestly, I don't want this because I have no (personal) need for it. I have just been asked to do it.

I'm curious - are you doing this because you've been ordered to do it? Or because you feel it's the best way to go?

From earlier posts it feels like the latter but the quoted post is the former...

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Honestly, I don't want this because I have no (personal) need for it. I have just been asked to do it.

Who asked you to do it -- the business? Did you explain the pros/cons that we've outlined? What are the business drivers or justifications?

No one has been rude to you in this forum. Everyone who responded has done so from the perspective of having far more experience than you and years and years of experience in this particular subject.

As was said earlier, this isn't a forum where we're going to tell you step-by-step how to do your job. What is rude is to come in here and expect us to tell you how to do it with steps, details, etc. and then get angry when we give you the *correct* guidance. If you want help, read up on the topic and then ask specific questions.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

To deploy a proper exchange environment with redundancy you are going to need
2 to 3 Domain Controllers
2 Exchange Front end servers
A Load balancer in front of the front end servers
Some sort of SPAM Filter
2 Backends in a DAG
Backup Power
External IP Address and a server running MS Forefront TMG and UAG for protection
Exchange based antivirus software
UCC Cert
Backup solution either by having another backend server with a LAG copy or an Enterprise backup suite like CommVault to backup the databases

A couple of additional items:

1. For virtualized environments, the Exchange servers (or any clustered servers/services) should be spread between multiple physical hosts.
2. Add offsite backup rotation as well.