Exchange 2000 behind a firewall / smtp relay svr

[pictron]

If you host Exchange 2000 behind a relay server and have that relay server accept and then forward email onto your protected email server... how does this affect external clients connecting to the exchange server for the purpose of accessing public folders....

I have not worked in this area before and i am not sure what I would need to do in order to maintain the public folder & ldap access to staff who work outside the office while moving the exchange server behind a relay server and therfore cutting it off from the world..

Any help would be great.

Many Thanks

 

[rtiv]

Go to

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange

and do a search on front end/back end. There is a great white paper which talks about exactly what your trying to accomplish. Essentially, you set up two boxes. The front end box which should sit in a DMZ, simply acts as "proxie" for external clients. The FE server receives clients request and talks and checks the active directory (via the Global Catalog and port 3268 LDAP > GC) to find out the home server of the client requesting the action.

Make sense ?

 

[meekrob]

I use this setup with a Linux firewall/email server as the "border" server. For the most part it works great, but as to accessing public folders I don't allow or recommend that. Set up OWA or a VPN for those users outside your internal network. You can run OWA over SSL for a secure connection, or a VPN provides the same amount of security. I wouldn't recomend exposing too many Exchange ports to the internet unless you invest in some heavy duty security.