OWA Setup

[cfgcjm]

We're a very small office and we have Windows SBS 2003.

I'm looking for a step by step on how to set up Outlook Web Access. I would consider myself a computer oriented guy but I don't know very much about networking or how SBS works and I don't want to screw anything up.

I'm asking because we have no real IT budget so having someone come in to do this would be an unnecessary expense.

We recently purchased a domain and I want our employees to be able to go to so sub-domain like mail.domain.com to access their email.

Any help would be great

 

[Zelandakh]

OWA is set up for you on SBS. In the company you connect to it by its name.

On your computer, go to

http://servername/exchange

What happens? Can you log in?

Get on the server and run Windows update until you can't run it any more, ensure you have the latest Windows and Exchange service packs installed (SP2 for each) as you need to be safe on this.

So now it works inside, let's get it working from outside. I assume you have a firewall / router. You need to open port 80 and 443 from the outside world to point at the LAN IP of your server (192.168.0.2 and not any public IP). Then you need a static IP address if you don't have one already - speak to your ISP and they'll sort that.

Then whoever hosts your domain needs to create mail.yourdomain.com to point at the static IP that your ISP has just done for you.

Then finally you test it from outside.

Note that I've deliberately left certificates out for the moment. A small shop can use a self cert and install it on the clients manually or you can buy a GoDaddy cert for $20.

You'll also be able to use Outlook Anywhere too which is even more fun.

 

[cfgcjm]

yes the

http://server/exchange

is working

...and i would make sure/open those ports how?

and would that create any problems with the way things currently work? or cause any vulnerability

 

[Zelandakh]

I don't know how you'd open those ports as I don't know what firewall / router device you have or how it is set up. For that, you'll need to read your system documentation or failing that, get out a manual.

Problems? No idea, again I don't know your setup.
Vulnerability? Again, I don't know but if your Exchange server is patched to date and you're opening the normal ports that expose thousands of servers with millions of users across the world, I think you'll be ok.