installation and configuration of Exchange server 2010

Installing Exchange 2010 Step-by-Step

This is the second part of a two part series on Microsoft Exchange 2010. In the first article we examined the changes and enhancements in Exchange 2010. This time we'll walk through the steps required to install a fully functional Exchange 2010 server on Windows Server 2008 R2.

System Requirements

First, you need to make sure that your Active Directory (AD) environment and your Exchange server meet the minimum requirements:

• AD forest functional level is Windows Server 2003 (or higher)
• AD Schema Master is running Windows Server 2003 w/SP1 or later
• Full installation of Windows Server 2008 w/SP2 or later OR Windows Server 2008 R2 for the Exchange server itself
• Exchange server is joined to the domain (except for the Edge Transport server role)

Prerequisites

In this example we are going to install Exchange 2010 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. Before installing Exchange we need to install some Windows components. It's important that you don't miss anything here because the Exchange 2010 installer does not provide very good feedback if Server 2008 R2 is missing required components.

1. Install the 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack
2. Add the appropriate Windows components/features
   1. Open PowerShell via the icon on the task bar or Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> Windows PowerShell >> Windows PowerShell. Be sure that PowerShell opened with an account that has rights to install Windows components/features.
   2. Run the following command: Import-Module ServerManager
   3. For a typical install with the Client Access, Hub Transport, and Mailbox roles run the following command: Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy -Restart. For a full matrix of the required Windows components with regards to the Exchange server roles see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354.aspx#WS08R2
3. If your Exchange server will have the Client Access Server role set the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service to start automatically
   1. Open PowerShell via the icon on the task bar or Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> Windows PowerShell >> Windows PowerShell. Be sure that PowerShell opened with an account that has rights to modify service startup settings.
   2. Run the following command: Set-Service NetTcpPortSharing -StartupType Automatic

Exchange 2010 Installation

Now we're ready to run the Exchange 2010 installer. We'll go through a typical installation that includes the Client Access, Hub Transport, and Mailbox roles. This is what you will want to install if you are only going to be running one Exchange server. If you scale out your Exchange architecture with multiple servers then you will want to familiarize yourself with the Exchange server roles for a proper deployment.

1. Logon to the desktop of your soon to be Exchange server with a Domain Admin account.
2. Run setup from the Exchange 2010 media.
3. Click on "Step 3: Choose Exchange language option" and choose one of the options (Install only languages from the DVD will be fine in most cases).
4. Click on "Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange."
5. Click Next at the Introduction page.
6. Accept the license terms and click Next.
7. Make a selection on the Error Reporting page and click Next.
8. Stick with the default "Typical Exchange Server Installation" and click Next.
9. Choose a name for your Exchange Organization and click Next.
10. Make a selection on the Client Settings page and click Next.
11. If you want your Exchange server to be available externally then choose a domain name such as mail.myorganization.com, click Next.
12. Make a selection on the Customer Experience Improvement Program page and click Next.
13. If all the prerequisites are there then you can click Install.
14. Grab a cup of coffee or take a walk while the installation process does its thing.
15. When the installation has finished go back to the Exchange installation page click on "Step 5: Get critical updates for Microsoft Exchange."
16. Install Microsoft Update (if necessary) so that Windows update will check for non-OS updates, and verify that there are no Exchange updates.

after i installed exchange 2007 i wanted to get email available internally to both clients
here is the websites i used
http://www.servolutions.com/support/config_exchange_2007.htm
i assume that to host an exchange server over the internat you need to pay for a hosting service similar to a website hosting service so i did not fallow steps 5 and 6

here is what i did

1. Add your own internet domain to the “Accepted Domains” list
Open the Exchange Management Console and select Organisation Configuration, Hub Transport.
In the middle pane select the Accepted Domains tab. There already will be one local domain configured here. You can leave it.

Choose New Accepted Domain in the Actions pane.


Chose a name for this domain (not important) and enter your internet domain name (in a domain.com format without @ or *@) as Accepted Domain.
Also, select Authoritative Domain to tell Exchange to accept internet emails for this domain name.

2. Configure a send connector for outgoing emails

The send connector is used to pipe outgoing emails from Exchange via your providers SMTP relay server to the internet.
Select Organisation Configuration, Hub Transport in the Exchange Management Console.
In the middle pane select the Send Connectors tab. And in the Actions pane click on New Send Connector

We’ll add a new send connector. Chose any name (not important for the function) on the first page:

On the next wizard page we need to specify an address space to be served for this connector.

The address space „*“ means this send connector is sending out email to any domain on the internet. You can build additional specific send connectors for other target addresses, like “*@sistercompany.com” if there are special routing requirements.



On the next page we switch the configuration to Route email through your provider SMTP relay server (Smarthost in Exchange terms) and add the provider server address.
The other option (use DNS without a relay server) can only be used when you are connected on a fixed IP address and host the webpages yourself.




The last page of the wizard is needed to enter the provider smtp relay servers username/password credentials. Almost all provider servers require you to log in before you can use their relay servers to send out email to protect against spam senders. It does not matter which users login data you use, this will not change the email content. Any provider smtp server login will do.

3. Configure the receive connector for incoming email

POPcon uses SMTP to forward emails to Exchange. For this to work we need to change two Exchange 2007 default configuration settings: The maximum email size is fixed to 10MB here and we need to add the anonymous user to the permission group in order to allow POPcon to transfer email.
Important: You also need to make sure to not install the Windows "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" service. This service could block the Exchange SMTP transport from actually answering the SMTP IP port (25) and could cause Emails to loop back to the internet if installed. Check Administrative Tasks, Services and disable this service.
We can find these configuration settings under Server Configuration, Hub Transport, Receive Connectors, Properties of the Default Receive Connector:

The Maximum message size is fixed to 10240KB (10MB) by default on the General tab of these properties Change that to 102400 (100MB) in order not to allow longer emails to come through. You can always limit individual user’s allowed maximum email sizes.



We also need to add the Anonymous users to the Permission Groups tab in order to allow POPcon to connect to this receive connector at all.

4. Assign email addresses to users in the active directory

All you need to do now is to add SMTP email addresses to users in the active directory. Users can have more than one SMTP address, for example they can have info@yourcompany.com in addition to jeff.smith@yourcompany.com.
Exchange provides the convenient E-Mail Address Policies feature that allows you to assign identically formatted email addresses to all (including future) users.
Open up Organization Configuration, Hub Transport, E-Mail Address Policies and click on New E-mail Address Policy in the actions pane.

You can assign a (non-essential) name to the new policy:



And then add a new E-Mail Addresses format on the next page:

Enter your domain name and select one of the formats:



after this was all completed i uninstalled office 2010 outlook from my clients and installed office 2007 outlook
then i followed the wizard for the automatica setup for each account
then sent a test email back and forth several times to make sure i was able to send and recieve internally
all was successful.

FreeNAS setup

just for extra exposure i wanted to setup a NAS system over the vmware network so both servers and both clients have access to a network share/drive and eventually different network drives
here is what i did
this website was what i followed
http://www.lagesse.org/freenas-tutorial-for-windows-users-part-one-installation/

Part 1
1. Download the most recent FreeNAS from this page.
2. Burn the ISO image to a CDROM.
3. Put the CDROM in the machine you will use as the file server. (Note – all data on the drive(s) in this machine will be destroyed. Make sure you don’t need any of it before proceeding!)
4. Reboot the computer and boot from the CDROM.
5. Allow the CD to load until you see the splash screen (below).

6. Press Enter

7. Assuming there is no data on the hard drives, select option 9 (Install/Upgrade) from the Console Setup Menu

8. From the install menu, select option #3 (Install ‘full’ release on hard drive)

9. The system will now show you the names of the CDROM drive(s) in your system. Enter in the CDROM name at the prompt (in the image below this is “acd0″.

10. The system will now show you the name(s) of the hard disk(s) in your system. In the example below there is only one drive, named “ad0″. Type the name in at the prompt and press enter.

11. At the prompt for “size of the OS partition” type 64 and press enter.
The system will be installed and a final prompt (below) tells you not to format the data partition. Since we had only one hard drive in the system it was formatted as part of the system installation.

12. Simply press enter and you will return to the Install Menu

13. Press 7 to return to the main menu.
14. Remove the CDROM and press 7 to reboot the system.
15. Once the system is completely rebooted you will see the FreeNAS splash screen- press enter.

16. Note the IP Address assigned to your server. It is displayed on the top of the screen. You will need this IP Address.

Part 2
1. Open a browser and type in the IP address of your server (in our example from Part One the IP address was 192.168.1.250. A Logon Dialog will appear:

The login name is “admin” and the password is “freenas”. Enter this and click enter.

2. The main configuration screen appears as below. There are MANY options here – but most users will only need to change a few of them. The first thing we will do is change the default password. On the left hand navigation click “General” under system settings.

3. Click the Password tab.

4. Enter the old password and then the new password in the dialog – the new password is entered twice.

5. Click back to the General Tab.

• Here you can rename your server. The default name is freenas, and that works for me. Feel free to change it. I haven’t played with this so I would stick with a single word with no spaces or odd characters.
• If you are on a domain you can change the default. I’m just on a Workgroup, so I’ll leave this as local.
• For added security you can change the admin name to something else.
• Change the time zone so it reflects your location.
• Click the Enable NTP checkbox to allow the server to update the clock over the Internet.

6. Before configuring anything else we will reboot the server and make sure that we can still login with our new credentials. On the left navigation under system click on Reboot, then click on Yes.
7. The system will only take a minute or so to reboot. Refresh your browser window and type in your new credentials. Next we prepare the shared drive.

8. From the Navigation Menu select Management under Disks. In the screen displayed click the circle with the plus in it to add a new disk.

9. There are three things to change on this page: First, select your hard drive in the “Disk” drop-down. If you had only one drive this should already be selected. Second, let’s save some power and allow the hard drives to power down. I set my hard disk standby time to 20 minutes. Third, set the Advanced Power Management – I set mine to minimum power use with standby. Click the ADD button. Your changes are complete, but not applied. Click the Apply Changes button.

10. Now we need to set the mount point. Under Disks select mount point. Click the circle with the plus in it. On this screen “Disks: Mount Point: Add” we will leave the Type as disk. Then select your drive in Disks the drop down box. Change the Partition drop-down to “2″. Leave the file system as USF. Name the mount point. I’ll call mine data. Enter a description (example – “Backup data”) Click on Add Now click on Apply Changes. Make sure the Status reads “OK”. If it doesn’t delete the mount (circle with the X in it) and go back to the beginning of step 10 and try again.

11. Now we set up sharing. On the Navigation Menu select CIFS/SMB from the Services menu. Click the enable tick-box (highlighted in the image above). Change the NetBiosName if you would like. I call mine “freenas”. (I have a vivid imagination) If you are on a workgroup, enter the name here. My workgroup is “LAGESSE”, so that is what I typed. Now enter a description. Again, I used my imagination and typed in “File Server” Ignore everything else on this page. Scroll to the bottom and click “Save and Restart”.

12. Now on the CIFS/SMB page click the “Shares” tab up top Click the circle/plus to add a share We’ll create a share called Data. Type Data in for the name. Enter a comment (My Data works for me). Click the box with the three dots to the right of Path. In the pop-up click on the folder name (in my case, data). Then click on OK. I turn on the Recycle Bin. Your choice. Click on Add then Apply Changes. Almost done! One more thing to set up.

13. Under Services click on NFS. Click the tick-box For Enable. Click the circle with the plus in it to add an authorized network. In the next screen type in the IP Address of your network. Example – if your server’s IP address is 192.168.1.250 type 192.168.1.1 in here. In any case, just make the first three parts of this the same as your server and make the last part a 1. Click Add Back at the Services: NFS screen click on Save and Restart”.

After both parts where completed i simply mapped the drive from freenas to each client and the DC

setting a freenas iscsi drive on esxi server

took all monday morning to do but did succeed
here is a rough description on how to set it all up

disks>management
 -select disk
 -select unformateed in preformatted file system
 -click add
 -click apply settings
disks>Format
 -select disk
 -files system > UFS
 -Format Disk
Services>iSCSI Target
 -click + under Extent
 -add extent name
 -add path to formatted disk
 -add size of disk to use
 -click add
 -click apply settings
 -click + under Target
 -add device name
 -change flag to rw
 -select storage
 -add the authorized network
 -click apply
 -click apply changes
 -click save and restart
Go Into ESXi
 -select lab-esxi1.exigent.lab
 -go to summary tab
 -click enter maintenance mode
 -go into maintenance mode
 -click configuration tab
 -click storage adaptors
 -right click and select rescan iSCSI adaptor
 -if the previously created target appears then go to storage under hardware
  -if not then the iSCSI target from freenas was not set up correctly
 -when in storage click add storage
 -select disk/lun
 -click next
 -the previously created iscsi will appear
 -then click next and go through the wizard to complete