Email server within the LAN

[audiopimp]

My boss asked my to look into building him an email server within the network. I need help.!.
What is this to do? Is Exchange the right program to do it?
So you know it's a small office, Win2kServer, workstations winXP (25), Lan/wan but the Email server is for Internal use only.
All new to me so your info is great!

Thanks for all your help

 

[ACraib]

Exchange can do this job fine ...though it may be overkill becuase you have to be running Active Directoy before you can install Exchange 2000. The first question you need to ask is can you support AD?

Also there are cheaper systems out there than Exchange that don't require AD to be running on your network.

 

[audiopimp]

Can someone tell me more about Active Directory...

thanks

 

[ACraib]

very very big topic. It's basically the place where MS stores all direcoty infromation ... eg User Names, Passwords, Groups, etc .... it can also be added to, which an Exchange 2000 installation does to add things like e-mail address to user accounts. Exchange also stores most of it's configuration information in AD ... hence the reliance on AD. If your Domain Controller goes down then Exchange goes with it ... so best to have more than one DC running AD.

I'd say your best bet is to get a book and set up a test enviroment so you can have a look at AD. The set-up for your situation should be that difficult because you only have one location but I would (if you go the Exchange route) have more than one DC running ... again this will increase the expense.

Hope this helps.

 

[audiopimp]

ok so then on this setup who could suggest to me a reliable internal email server:

outside
I
Cable Modem
I
Router
I
2000 server
I
48 port witch
I I I I I I I I I...
-email server
-workstations

thanmsd

 

[dput]

If you want something easy to just work with e-mail, I have had great luck with a product called i-Mail from Ipswitch. Cost is very reasonable and hardware requirements are minimumal. You can go to

http://www.ipswitch.com

for more info. Dan

 

[mparry]

Or,

OfficeTalk V3 - from Sareen Software.

We currently use this product in our office (29 users) - it provides Email, Calendar, Planning Tool, Contacts, Meeting Bookings...

It's really easy to setup, and the company offer support contracts / helpdesk support. However if you need wider functionality or have much higher staff numbers to cater for you may obviously need to look at something like Exchange.

http://www.sareen.com/

Marcus

 

[virtualranger]

FTGate do some excellent mail server software. I used it for years until we changed over to a Small Business Server which comes with Exchange so we stopped using it. Would highly reccommend it as an alternative to Exchange - it's fully win2k compatible, powerful, configurable and can be set up in 10 minutes (honest).

http://www.ftgate.com