Hosting Email on Exchange? 1

[Sprad]

Can any one help get me going in the right direction on learning how to host email on exchange for a small web hosting startup company? They want to offer a certain number of mailboxes for each of their clients. Each client will have thier own domainname so I am assuming I will be using different IMS settings and MX registrations. I admit I am a little over my head. I only run a small exchange set up now with one domain so I have no clue how to do a multiple one. I saw an artcle in here on how to host several domains on an exchange server but it seemed to me that that setup was using only one MX.

Thanks for any help

lost in the tall grass

 

[Warcorp]

IMS can be set to accept multiple domains and multiple MX records can point the IMS.

IMS routing can accept many inbound domains and by assigning the proper SMTP addresses to the users, you can effectivly host many internet domains on one exchange server.

So lets lay out an example:

you have 2 domains a.com and b.com and your Exchange servername is exchange.isp.com

you will have an MX record that points to exchange.isp.com for each domain

a.com mx 10 exchange.isp.com.
b.com mx 10 exchange.isp.com.

In the IMC, Routing section you set a.com for an inbound only domain and b.com as an inbound only domain.

To identify the individual users:
Lets say Fred and Wilma have accounts on a.com
and
barney and betty have accounts on b.com

in fred's address listing in fred's exechange account, you will have an internet address of fred@a.com and in wilma's account you will have an internet address of wilma@a.com (That must be the only internet address listed unless your going to allow for aliases for each user)..

The same for barney and betty...barney@b.com and betty at b.com.

Once everything is set the mail follows the following path...

Sender write mail to wilma@a.com

looks up mx record, gets host address for mail, sends mail to the reciever at exchange.isp.com. Since a.com is an inbound domain, Exchange looks for an internal address that matches the wilma@a.com address, finds it and delivers it to the mailbox.

I realize this is a lot of info, please let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Sprad]

Thanks for the help. I am still a little lost do to my inexperience. Will I set up an entire organization for each cliet and then configure thier IMS. Or will each client just have a different site on my server configurd with thier IMS. Or am I way off base again. I think my problem is I am too inexpeienced to even get started. Thanks for your help. And any other you might give.
Are your instructions for 5.5. or 2000. If I try this with 2000 then I will have to set up differnet domains wont I?
Are there any good websites articles or technet docs. that may enlighten me?

Thanks Again

 

[Warcorp]

You CAN set up individual organizations but that requires you to seperate out the message stores and is a ton of work. The outline above essentially stores everyone in a common organization and has IMS do the routing to individual mailboxes based on their smtp addresses listed in their individual accounts. It's like having a shared POP3/SMTP server system except Exchange is doing the background work instead of sendmail/pop3d.

 

[Sprad]

Thanks For your help.

What is the best way to have the clients get thier email?

 

[Warcorp]

Exchange fully supports POP3/IMAP4 access to Exchange mailboxes. As an added capability you can offer Outlook Webaccess as well.

 

[Sprad]

What is the best way to set up a.com and b.com so that thier mailboxes are "grouped" in such a way that I can administer them at a group level.

Or

Is this what you were talking about when you were telling me that I would have to seperate the message stores.

My concern is that if we get 50 clients for example, and each client has 20 mailboxes then I am going to have to pick through 1000 mailboxes to adminster any one client's mail account. (delete, restrict mail, rename, etc). Is there a simpler way to group them together than creating thier own organizations?

I appreciate your help. The things you have suggested have really given me a good start.