EMBC & Exchange

[Bezwick]

Does anyone out there run their own exchange server in school but get their smtp feed through EMBC, or even plug your exchange server into their tree.
I have been resisting suggesting to our SLT that we should get an exchange server as i am already under staffed and hoped the EMBC would sort their act out.
I am now giving up on that ever happening and wondering how many others have and what kind of problems you faced. Recon i might be able to force it through into next years budget, but need advice on whether trying to cut out EMBC will make things better or worse.
Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.
Cheers

[kmount]

Hosting your own server and having them set up the required rule inwards via EMF works fine; as does the smtp hand off.

Really quite an easy system to implement ...

[Bezwick]

Do you know if we use the EMF method, do we have pretty much full autonomy over our email domain or do they insist we add/remove mail boxes from their system and then pass them down to our exchange system?
Also do you know if the emails will still pass through their content fileters this way or not?
Cheers

Hosting your own server and having them set up the required rule inwards via EMF works fine; as does the smtp hand off.

Really quite an easy system to implement ...

[kmount]

They will only allow you to host your own mail IF you use EMF (it's to do with the SMTP not being allowed to be port forwarded through their firewall to an edge site).

If you use the EMF system it will merely process the mail and pass it straight off to your exchange, regardless of it being a valid account etc; that's up to your exchange box to determine.

In effect, wiping all of your EMBC "mail" accounts is the best course of action as once switched over in EMF to hand off to your IP they won't function properly anyway.

If you use your current .sch.uk domain I believe you will retain the Spam & AV protection you currently have, whereas as we're doing it with an additional domain we're not entitled to the Spam & AV so we have just keyword filtering (which we'll eventually turn off) and manage the spam/etc locally which isn't ideal but it'll work for now.

Hope this helps!

[GrumbleDook]

Putting it simply, EMF works as a mail filter and relay before handing incoming mail to the specified server, in your present case it is handed to EMBC's own exchange boxes.

A simple change in setting within EMF will hand it off to your internal mail server (or even to another external 3rd party mail provider ... sorted this out so in Northants it can be sent over to the LP provider). This takes a few minutes to start redirecting your mail rather than the few days required it it is a change completed by changing MX records in DNS.

All mail going out of your internal box hits EMF and then that is filtered and passed to the receiving mail serevers (ie the outside world or other EMBC /school hosted mailboxes)

[Bezwick]

Sounds fairly straight forward then. However the only problem i can see now is internal mail if the EMF filter is acting at EMBC wouldn't that mean that internal mail will not be filtered?
Sorry the last exchange server i built was Exchange 2000 about 7 years ago, memory is a little rusty. But as far as i remember it had no content filtering.

So am i right in thinking that if i build an Exchange 2003 (Think i might give 2007 a miss thanks to all the command line interface) server, it has a rudimentary content filter built in and i could use that to filter internal mail, but the EMBC mail filter would still be able to deal with external mails?

Cheers

[GrumbleDook]

Yes, the migration away from the EMBC hosted boxes does mean that you have to provide your own internal filtering. The 3rd party I routed one school to does the internal filtering for them.

The other option is to put in your own internal filtering and there are a number of them out on the market. Remember that some of these internal filtering systems will also allow you to do archives, etc ... and if you go down that road you need to think carefully about your DPA and FoIA policies incase you get asked for access to emails.

I have yet to find consistent guidance on archiving of emails and the legal requirements ... a prod of Steve Rochford might help at this point ;-)

[SpuffMonkey]

The other option is to put in your own internal filtering and there are a number of them out on the market.

Have you seen any working nicely? I was thinking of getting one (finance permitting).

[GrumbleDook]

There should be some at BETT if you are coming down, if not the infosec is the best place to look for this sort of extra.

[Divaldo]

Does anyone have Exchange 2007 running successfully with the EMBC?

We host our own Exchange server and have recently moved over from a different ISP to the EMBC. We can send email external after configuring a Smart host in a send connector pointing to relay.embc.uk.com, but we are not able to receive any emails from an external source.

I've tried creating a recieve connector and specified the IP address of relay.embc.uk.com (92.43.65.4), but to no avail.

Thanks.

[GrumbleDook]

Have you raised a call with 1st line? There was an issue earlier with the use of relay.embc.uk.com.

[kmount]

Does anyone have Exchange 2007 running successfully with the EMBC?

We host our own Exchange server and have recently moved over from a different ISP to the EMBC. We can send email external after configuring a Smart host in a send connector pointing to relay.embc.uk.com, but we are not able to receive any emails from an external source.

I've tried creating a recieve connector and specified the IP address of relay.embc.uk.com (92.43.65.4), but to no avail.

Thanks.

Have you checked that your EMF account for the domain has the correct local IP for hand off?

[Divaldo]

Thanks both, I was aware of the problems they had in the morning, but after speaking to 1st line yesterday afternoon, they should all be resolved now.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is an EMF account?

Thanks.

[kmount]

EMF is the Spam/AV system employed by EMBC which all mail in/out has to pass through.

Has your exchange "ever" worked since you joined EMBC?

[Divaldo]

Thanks. No, mail into our school has never worked. We only made the switchover to EMBC last week though. Previously we were with NTL and it was all fine.