SBS 2003, Exchange & Outlook

We have an SBS 2003 Server, Exchange 2003 is installed (I believe), but not
really configured & previously not used for email. All users have been using
POP3 email. Now we want to sctually implement exchange for our email. Is
there any good documentation on implementing SBS 2003 Exchange after the
fact. What happens to the users existing pst file. we would like to preserve
the existing email. Can the existing pst be merged into Exchange? Any help
would be greatly appreciated.

Your Exchange Server might already be configured properly based on having
run the CEICW. First, go to a user's properties in AD Users and Computers
and make sure their default e-mail address is correct (the one in bold). It
should be what you want to use as the external address, user@yourdomain.com.
This may match the POP address or not, it doesn't matter as long as it's
what you want to use.

Now from your desktop PC, open a command prompt and type "telnet 10.0.0.2
25" without the quotes, and substituting your SBS's internal IP address for
10.0.0.2. You should get a response that looks like "220
mail.yourdomain.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.3959
ready at Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:33:22 -0500." If you do, try the same thing
from an external PC such as your home, except using the SBS's external IP
instead of the internal one. That will verify that your Exchange Server is
properly listening for e-mail.

If you don't get the expected result from either of the two tests above, run
the CEICW, selecting "do not change" for everything except e-mail. If you
have ISA, you'll also need to tell it to allow SMTP on its page in the
wizard. Now test again to make sure you have the correct addresses and the
server responds to telnet. Don't change any DNS records until you've
verified that you can get a telnet response to the server's external IP from
the Internet - this will prevent people sending mail to a server that's not
going to receive it.

If your POP accounts use user@ISP.com or some address other than what you're
going to be using on the SBS, you can leave the POP part of this alone until
you finish everything else. If you're using the same addresses, you're
going to want to watch the timing of the next steps so you don't miss mail.

Basically what you've got left to do is to configure the MX and A records to
facilitate sending mail to your SBS instead of to the POP hosting company.
Just go into your DNS control panel or contact whoever controls your DNS,
and get the mail records configured - you need an MX record pointing to
mail.yourdomain.com and an A record pointing "mail" to your external IP. If
you have questions about this please post back and get them answered before
changing anything.

Now for the fun part (not). You need to go into each user's Outlook profile
and make the following changes (ignore anything that's already configured
this way). You need to add the Exchange Server by going to CP -> Mail and
clicking to add a new e-mail account, choose Exchange Server, and add it.
Also in the mail profile, make sure that the default delivery location for
new messages is the server mailbox, not the PST. Once the MX record kicks
over to the SBS, new messages will start going to the server mailboxes, and
this will allow the users to see them. Now, have the users drag-and-drop
items from the PST into the appropriate folders in the server mailbox.
You'll be able to see both the mailbox and the PST in the Outlook folder
list. Once you've made sure that all of the items have been copied into the
mailbox from the PST, r-click the PST in the Outlook folder list and close
it. That will keep items from ending up there by accident and getting lost.
Please note that MRU lists in Outlook will be pointing to the PST rather
than the server mailbox, so if you have a folder called "Saved Mail" and you
use the MRU on the "Move to" menu, you could be moving items to the wrong
place if the PST is still available.

Once you've verified that e-mails are flowing through the Exchange Server
properly, you can remove the old POP accounts from the Outlook profiles.
Just let Outlook try to pick up the messages from the POP accounts one final
time, then delete POP from the Outlook profiles. (Once you change the
default delivery location to the server mailbox, even messages Outlook picks
up from the POP accounts will go there rather than to the PST).




"Dennis" <Dennis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FEFC02F9-169C-4B2B-8D82-F18A00A1A360@microsoft.com...
> We have an SBS 2003 Server, Exchange 2003 is installed (I believe), but
> not
> really configured & previously not used for email. All users have been
> using
> POP3 email. Now we want to sctually implement exchange for our email. Is
> there any good documentation on implementing SBS 2003 Exchange after the
> fact. What happens to the users existing pst file. we would like to
> preserve
> the existing email. Can the existing pst be merged into Exchange? Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe a couple of references to back up Dave's post...

Switching from POP3 to SMTP
http://msmvps.com/blogs/javier/archi.../25/16621.aspx

Moving to Exchange
http://www.supergumby.dyndns.org/sbs/email.htm

Migrating from POP3 to SMTP
http://www.amset.info/exchange/pop3-smtpswitch.asp

--
Merv Porter [SBS-MVP]
============================

"Dennis" <Dennis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FEFC02F9-169C-4B2B-8D82-F18A00A1A360@microsoft.com...
> We have an SBS 2003 Server, Exchange 2003 is installed (I believe), but
> not
> really configured & previously not used for email. All users have been
> using
> POP3 email. Now we want to sctually implement exchange for our email. Is
> there any good documentation on implementing SBS 2003 Exchange after the
> fact. What happens to the users existing pst file. we would like to
> preserve
> the existing email. Can the existing pst be merged into Exchange? Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.

And More:

Here are some tips harvested from this group and others:

Be sure you have an exchange enabled backup and anti virus solution in
place, then check the first three links, then the rest.:

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices Analyzer
http://207.46.19.190/downloads/detai...displaylang=en

Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices Analyzer Updated
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive...r-updated.aspx

How to Use the Windows SBS 2003 BPA
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive...-2003-bpa.aspx

___

In regards to the general issues involved, please look at the following:

To use the native ability of SBS Exchange to host your own mail, there are a
few things you should check.

First, be sure your SBS server and all the server apps are fully patched,
including Exchange and ISA. Run the MS Baseline Advisor to be sure. .

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../mbsahome.mspx

Exchange SP2 is a nice improvement for filtering junk and spam. It allows
for increasing the size of the information store.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro.../download.mspx

Before you install Exchange Server 2003 SP2, please make sure that the
following hotfixes have been installed if you are using in Windows Server
2003.

898060 Installing security update MS05-019 or Windows Server 2003 Service
Pack

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=898060

905214 Windows Server 2003 may stop responding when you enable the Sender ID
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=905214

More information is documented in the following Microsoft KB article (the
"Required Hotfixes" section):

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Release Notes

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=906671

Install or update real-time antivirus for Exchange - many like Trend's
Client Server Messaging for SMB

Install or update an anti spam solution, again Trend, or GFI are often
recommended. You may consider a hardware appliance to take care of this.

You will need either a static IP address for your router/firewall or a
service that collects requests for your FQDN and forwards it to your often
changing dynamic ip address.

http://www.dyndns.com - among others will do this for you.

Contact your ISP and verify that they will support you in this. Verify that
they do not block traffic on port 25. You will need them to create a MX and
a PRT (reverse DNS) record. Some ISP's allow/make you do this yourself on
their management pages for your account. Others set this up for you.

You might want a SPF record designating your mx record as an authorized
sender of mail from your domain. Have a look at www.openspf.org
http://www.openspf.org

To avoid missing any mail when you are off line, you can ask your ISP to,
(or change to an ISP who will), create a backup mail server with a lower
priority cache than the record for your mail server. If you are off line,
they will hold your mail until you come back. Ask the folks in New Orleans
about being off line for days, or weeks.

And, you can run the POP connector concurently until you are certain that
there is no more mail at your ISP mail boxes to be retrieved. "Usually" this
is 24 to 48 hours after the correct modifications to your MX record.

You will need to configure your router/firewall to accept inbound
connections on port 25 and forward them to the ip address of your SBS
exchange server on the subnet that you have connected to the
router/firewall. In the case of two nic installations, this should be the
second, or "external" nic.

Once all the preparations are done, the last step is to run the CEICW to set
all the settings and tell Exchange what the reply domain address is. If you
have multiple domains you can set up additional SMTP addresses, but there
can be only one default reply address.


--
Larry

Please post the resolution to
your issue so that all can benefit.

"Dennis" <Dennis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FEFC02F9-169C-4B2B-8D82-F18A00A1A360@microsoft.com...
> We have an SBS 2003 Server, Exchange 2003 is installed (I believe), but
> not
> really configured & previously not used for email. All users have been
> using
> POP3 email. Now we want to sctually implement exchange for our email. Is
> there any good documentation on implementing SBS 2003 Exchange after the
> fact. What happens to the users existing pst file. we would like to
> preserve
> the existing email. Can the existing pst be merged into Exchange? Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.

I would like to thank Dave Nickaason, Merv Porter, & Larry Struckmeyer for
providing me with the information derived from their knowledge, experience
and insite. The information you provided me via this newsgroup thread allowed
me to make a successful transition to SBS Exchange 2003.

Thanks again,
Dennis Anderson

"Dennis" wrote:

> We have an SBS 2003 Server, Exchange 2003 is installed (I believe), but not
> really configured & previously not used for email. All users have been using
> POP3 email. Now we want to sctually implement exchange for our email. Is
> there any good documentation on implementing SBS 2003 Exchange after the
> fact. What happens to the users existing pst file. we would like to preserve
> the existing email. Can the existing pst be merged into Exchange? Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.