Help setting up OWA

[iantaylor2100]

Hi we are moving over to Exhange 2003 and want to use OWA.
Can some please tell me or point me in the direction of a guide on how this all works.

Aswell as the software I need to know how the security all works, e.g. how the user gets from the webserver through the firewall to read their mail.

Also does the webserver have to be a windows machine?

Thanks in advance.
Ian Taylor

 

[PaulGillespie]

What i've done in the past is to forward port 80 onto the owa server then from a web browser enter \\publicipaddress/exchange

this will then prompt you for a username and password.

If you have another webserver on the network then you will have to change the port owa runs on to say 81 (or whatever you want). You will do this in IIS on the server exchange is installed on. you will then have to enter
\\publicipaddress/exchange:81

Easier to do this from a link on a webpage.

Think this is all correct. Give you something to go on anyway.

Paul

 

[iantaylor2100]

cheers for the reply.

so does this mean that you are allowing user to come int though the internet to your internal network?

doesn't sound very secure.

in my head i have:

int - fw/dmz (web server) - internal network (exchange server)

if the mail is on the exchange server how do you let users get access to it via the web server in the dmz?

usually you don;t let traffic originate from the mz side to the internal network but I can't see how you would get awy with this.

Ian

 

[PaulGillespie]

I'm not really farmilliar with the way you have it set up.
You can put OWA on a seperate server and you could then put this in the DMZ. Not sure if this is secure or not though and i've not done it myself.

when i've used OWA, i've always done it thew way i described above. You only allow port 80 to come in and keep a well patched system etc. There may well be better ways to do it but sometimes a seperate server for OWA and seperate server to run exchange is not ecconomically possible for some of my clients.

I thought having a web server in the DMZ mean that the web server is not protected at all? Is this true?

Sorry

 

[iantaylor2100]

the web server in the dmz is still protected by the firewall. just that if it does get hacked it should know anything about the internal network and thus the hacker cannot go any further.

In your setup then you setup the xchange server with owa in the internal trusted network and then allow on teh firewall setup an external ip going to this machine on port 80 only.
Does this machine also authenticate the users or do you do something else first?

Ian

 

[PaulGillespie]

Yes, the machine then prompts for user name and password. It is the same as if you were using OWA over the LAN. Have you used it over the LAN? if not, open your browser and type:
//privateip/exchange

Paul

 

[iantaylor2100]

we are currently testing it. can you answer this for me.
Does outlook or office need to be installed?

I tried it on a mchine that only had typical office installed and it asked for the office cd???

This is crazy if it has?

Also where is the Global Address book kept. We currently use 5.5 and 2003 is well defferent.

Cheers again for your help.

Ian

 

[PaulGillespie]

I've had that aswell, i think is you have office installed it asks for the cd to install some plug ins for OWA. If you do not have office installed, it does not prompt you.


The GAB is a differant story, you do not get one! you have to type the persons name into the TO field and hit send. It will either resolve the name or come back and say that is cannot resolve that name. You could however set up a contacts folde in public folders and use addresses from that.

Good luck

 

[iantaylor2100]

Thats crazy in 5.5 every time you setup a new user they are add to teh global address book.

cheers for all your help.

here goes nothing.

 

[PaulGillespie]

I've also had issues with adding new users and distribution groups and them not showing up in the global address book.
A re boot or a couple of days have always fixed it. Strange!

I should have said, OWA users can not browse the GAB but they can search it. I think it would take huge amounts of bandwidth to give OWA users the GAB

2003 is good once you've got your head round it. but i would say not hugely differant to 5.5, they both do the same thing essentially but OWA in 2003 is far better. Dont upgrade for the sake of it it's not worth it in my opinion, only do it if you are upgrading the rest of the network.

Good luck!

 

[iantaylor2100]

we are doing a full upgrade new hardware windows 2003, exchange 2003 the lot.

In testing phase at moment. Coming from NT domains the whole Active Directory is a new ball game to get use to.

Exchange03 is very strange everything used to be done via the exchange admin but now it seems it is done via AD users and comps. However of this is so what is the point of the exchange system manager?

 

[PaulGillespie]

ah you'll get the hang of it. eventually!

 

[iantaylor2100]

hope so, cheers again for your help.