Installing Exchange on a test network.

[Kyle]

I have been trying to install Exchange server tonight on my test network. I have two DC in my domain that replicate DNS. I have had a lot of trouble and now know what a lot of you mean by "Check DNS" this caused me a load of grief when i ran DCDIAG. I got the DNS sorted and replication and then i had a system log error in DCDIAG.

I cant believe that because their were past errors in the Event viewer>System log that DCDIAG fails. As soon as i cleared the lot DCDIAG ran fine.

 

Big learning curve for me.

 

I'm gonna have to stay up now till it finishes installing :-)

[Uraken]

nice one mate are you going to connect to a isp to get a real feel for exchange mail coming and being distrubuted to various users?

[Kyle]

Had not thought that far ahead yet, but if i do i think i'm going to need a lotof help.......... ;-)

[CyberNerd]

Have a look at Zimbra, it's really easy to setup and AD integration wasn't a problem. did I mention it's free

http://www.zimbra.com/

[Kyle]

It looks very good but the majority of school i visit all use exchange so i need to concentrate on that at the mo.. but thanks for the tip.

[Uraken]

as long as you can to speak to your isp mate you will be very surprised how easy it is to set up exchange server. Get your self a test domain with email for about a tenner a year and fully test it and don't forget we're all here to help you.

[Kyle]

as long as you can to speak to your isp mate you will be very surprised how easy it is to set up exchange server. Get your self a test domain with email for about a tenner a year and fully test it and don't forget we're all here to help you.

 

I'd love to know how to do this but to be honest its well above my knowledge.

 

Can anyone give me help on how o would go about setting this up so i could test it.

[Uraken]

if you buy a domain from some isp lets say http://www.kyle.co.uk than you should also get mail lets say [email protected] now normally your isp will host your website so you just upload your stuff via ftp to them, and they supply you with pop email settings so you can configure outlook, so they basically handle your email for you and forward it to your pop acount as and when you click send and recieve.

 

your isp do this via something called mx records so all you need to do is set up exchange server on a server with a static public ip address or using a dns forwarded ip address from someone like mydns .org and have your isp change the mx records for your domain, it then becomes a catch all addresss so that if someone sends to [email protected] or anything else at @kyle.co.uk exchnage server catches it and distributes it to your configured users.

usually when you buy a domain and hosting from an isp they give you access to a control panel for your domain and the chances are the settings are in there.

[contink]

I have been trying to install Exchange server tonight on my test network. I have two DC in my domain that replicate DNS. I have had a lot of trouble and now know what a lot of you mean by "Check DNS" this caused me a load of grief when i ran DCDIAG. I got the DNS sorted and replication and then i had a system log error in DCDIAG.

I cant believe that because their were past errors in the Event viewer>System log that DCDIAG fails. As soon as i cleared the lot DCDIAG ran fine.

 

Big learning curve for me.

Eerie timing as I've just gone through this over the past few days an finally got it all working

 

One thing that I found with the DCDIAG was that I put a DNS setting in the DC's NIC config screwing things up... and yeah that log error is just plain daft..

 

Oh and as for the learning curve.. here have some pitons and my spare ice axe

 

I'd love to know how to do this but to be honest its well above my knowledge.

 

Can anyone give me help on how o would go about setting this up so i could test it.

In a nutshell you need to worry about a few things: security (making sure you don't let everyone in), DNS (pointing your test domains MX record to your exchange server), oh and having your IP as reachable.

 

security.. well you're going to need to think about a firewall which has the relevant port open (not sure what that is on exchange).

 

reachable IP and DNS.. If you're doing this over a standard net connection (ie: dynamic IP address) then you need to make it reachable using something like dyndns.org.. Not entirely sure if you need to use a static IP but someone else can clarify that.

 

This isn't so much exchange stuff though, more networking knowledge.