I have a client with an office with a SBS 2003 domain that is totally messed
up and we are going to wipe it and start from scratch. They are not even
using Exchange and are just using POP accounts.

The local office has about 25 people that access the server/domain but they
have 200 representatives world wide that need email accounts. The
representatives do not access the domain at all.

What is the best way to set up SBS for this? What I'm thinking would be best
is to have the domain as @widget.com and then have the representatives as
something like @tx.widget.com (Texas) and @es.widget.com (Spain) and
@cn.widget.com (China). Would this work and would there be any problems? How
would I set up my internet DNS for this? Especially how would I do the MX
Record?

Are there better alternatives?

Thanks, David.

In my opinion, this may be one of those cases where choosing SBS "by the
numbers" (aka by seat count) may be misleading. I'd have to actually sit
down with a client and figure out what their expectations are and look at
usage patterns and planned growth, but my first instinct is that I'd be
looking at a standard server (or even now a Foundation server) deployment
and a separate email solution since the disparity between email accounts and
domain accounts is so great. So, in short? I suspect SBS is not a good fit
here...

-Cliff

"dsatchell" <support@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:46E8D733-DA9F-453C-B40D-FC7A03B54D5A@newsgroup

> I have a client with an office with a SBS 2003 domain that is totally
> messed
> up and we are going to wipe it and start from scratch. They are not even
> using Exchange and are just using POP accounts.
>
> The local office has about 25 people that access the server/domain but
> they
> have 200 representatives world wide that need email accounts. The
> representatives do not access the domain at all.
>
> What is the best way to set up SBS for this? What I'm thinking would be
> best
> is to have the domain as @widget.com and then have the representatives as
> something like @tx.widget.com (Texas) and @es.widget.com (Spain) and
> @cn.widget.com (China). Would this work and would there be any problems?
> How
> would I set up my internet DNS for this? Especially how would I do the MX
> Record?
>
> Are there better alternatives?
>
> Thanks, David.

Sorry I wasn't clear. I am aware of the 75 user limit of SBS 2003 and I do
realize that EBS 2008 would probably be better but as I mentioned they
already have SBS 2003 and I doubt they would pay for the upgrade and
significant cost just to give 200 people access to Exchange when they hav
been working fine with POP3.

Only the widget.com domain would be a part of SBS. I would like
@tx.widget.com (Texas) ; @es.widget.com (Spain) ; etc ; to be hosted as POP3
on the internet. But I don't want the SBS portion (widget.com) to be POP3 at
all.

David.

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:27:01 -0700, dsatchell
<support@newsgroup> wrote:

>Sorry I wasn't clear. I am aware of the 75 user limit of SBS 2003 and I do
>realize that EBS 2008 would probably be better but as I mentioned they
>already have SBS 2003 and I doubt they would pay for the upgrade and
>significant cost just to give 200 people access to Exchange when they hav
>been working fine with POP3.
>
>Only the widget.com domain would be a part of SBS. I would like
>@tx.widget.com (Texas) ; @es.widget.com (Spain) ; etc ; to be hosted as POP3
>on the internet. But I don't want the SBS portion (widget.com) to be POP3 at
>all.

I did something similar (though not using SBS). Only around 150 users
were on Exchange, the rest had POP mailboxes.

I created the internal DNS with a .local suffix (I don't normally do
this but did in this case), and got the MX records for domain.com to
point to the Exchange box.

I then created subdomains of agents.domain.com and pointed the MX
record at an email forwarding company, and on their site set up the
forwarders to go to the relevant external mailboxes. It would be a
similar setup to this, only in your case, the mailboxes would be POP
mailboxes and not forwarders.

You would need to find a hosting company with sufficient clue to set
this up, or give you sufficient control over various aspects so you
can do it yourself.

The reason I did the .local domain internally was due to the fact that
I needed to have the agents.domain.com resolve. I could also have
done this using conditional forwarding on the internal DNS server, but
wanted to keep things simple.

Again the agents.domain.com was not hosted on the Exchange server.

Andrew.

The problem is that if you give 200 users email accounts, you're 125 users
past your statuatory limit. They ARE accessing the domain, in the form of
Microsoft Exchange which uses the resources of the domain to authenticate
the users. There is no way to do this legally with SBS, other than to leave
the remote users as external POP3 or IMAP accounts only. What you _can_ do
is then add those POP3 accounts to Exchange as "Contacts" that allow them to
be seen by your internal users, and included in distribution lists, etc. But
they can't connect to Exchange to get their mail -- the mail would have to
be hosted externally.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/xperts64
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/charlie.russel


"dsatchell" <support@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:B0CC8EB1-17E9-429E-AEC7-A5148B01526C@newsgroup

> Sorry I wasn't clear. I am aware of the 75 user limit of SBS 2003 and I do
> realize that EBS 2008 would probably be better but as I mentioned they
> already have SBS 2003 and I doubt they would pay for the upgrade and
> significant cost just to give 200 people access to Exchange when they hav
> been working fine with POP3.
>
> Only the widget.com domain would be a part of SBS. I would like
> @tx.widget.com (Texas) ; @es.widget.com (Spain) ; etc ; to be hosted as
> POP3
> on the internet. But I don't want the SBS portion (widget.com) to be POP3
> at
> all.
>
> David.
>

No, you were clear. It was apparently me that was not.

There are a few edge cases where I feel SBS (nor EBS) applies. More
specifically, there are cases where I feel *Exchange* doesn't apply.
Exchange is a great "integrated" product. If you have a system where almost
every domain user needs an email account and vice-versa and those two
numbers are close to matching, Exchange is an ideal solution. You buy SBS
or EBS based on size and other considerations.

But if you need *many* more email accounts than domain accounts (or vice
versa) then SBS or EBS may not be a good fit. Exchange itself may not be a
good fit. Its licensing is prices as an integrated product and can get
prohibitively expensive when used outside of that design. When, for
example, is the last time you've seen Exchange as an email solution at an
ISP (as evidenced by OWA as their webmail client?)

I believe that in this case, another solution might be more appropriate.
But again, without having quite a bit more information, I couldn't recommend
what that solution would be. If it were me, I'd not be planning anything
without a serious conversation with the client to get some information,
provide some options, set some goals and expectations, and perhaps explain
why SBS is not a good fit...

-Cliff


"dsatchell" <support@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:B0CC8EB1-17E9-429E-AEC7-A5148B01526C@newsgroup

> Sorry I wasn't clear. I am aware of the 75 user limit of SBS 2003 and I do
> realize that EBS 2008 would probably be better but as I mentioned they
> already have SBS 2003 and I doubt they would pay for the upgrade and
> significant cost just to give 200 people access to Exchange when they hav
> been working fine with POP3.
>
> Only the widget.com domain would be a part of SBS. I would like
> @tx.widget.com (Texas) ; @es.widget.com (Spain) ; etc ; to be hosted as
> POP3
> on the internet. But I don't want the SBS portion (widget.com) to be POP3
> at
> all.
>
> David.
>

there's an almost workable way where Exchange is the only MX record but
'forwards all unresolvable addresses' to a 2nd mail system but this makes
SPAM handling a PITA and causes unnecessary traffic on the SBS internet
connection.

Of course, it could easily be done using an external mail system to provide
the email addresses, which could all be in one domain, and just run the SBS
office as an SBS office collecting mail (via POP or whatever other
mechanism, SMTP forwarding would be good) as part of the public domain.

"Cliff Galiher" <cgaliher@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:ekCBhPNKKHA.1380@newsgroup

> No, you were clear. It was apparently me that was not.
>
> There are a few edge cases where I feel SBS (nor EBS) applies. More
> specifically, there are cases where I feel *Exchange* doesn't apply.
> Exchange is a great "integrated" product. If you have a system where
> almost every domain user needs an email account and vice-versa and those
> two numbers are close to matching, Exchange is an ideal solution. You buy
> SBS or EBS based on size and other considerations.
>
> But if you need *many* more email accounts than domain accounts (or vice
> versa) then SBS or EBS may not be a good fit. Exchange itself may not be
> a good fit. Its licensing is prices as an integrated product and can get
> prohibitively expensive when used outside of that design. When, for
> example, is the last time you've seen Exchange as an email solution at an
> ISP (as evidenced by OWA as their webmail client?)
>
> I believe that in this case, another solution might be more appropriate.
> But again, without having quite a bit more information, I couldn't
> recommend what that solution would be. If it were me, I'd not be planning
> anything without a serious conversation with the client to get some
> information, provide some options, set some goals and expectations, and
> perhaps explain why SBS is not a good fit...
>
> -Cliff
>
>
> "dsatchell" <support@newsgroup> wrote in message
> news:B0CC8EB1-17E9-429E-AEC7-A5148B01526C@newsgroup

>> Sorry I wasn't clear. I am aware of the 75 user limit of SBS 2003 and I
>> do
>> realize that EBS 2008 would probably be better but as I mentioned they
>> already have SBS 2003 and I doubt they would pay for the upgrade and
>> significant cost just to give 200 people access to Exchange when they hav
>> been working fine with POP3.
>>
>> Only the widget.com domain would be a part of SBS. I would like
>> @tx.widget.com (Texas) ; @es.widget.com (Spain) ; etc ; to be hosted as
>> POP3
>> on the internet. But I don't want the SBS portion (widget.com) to be POP3
>> at
>> all.
>>
>> David.
>>

What Andrew is describing is what I'm talking about.

It is very possible that I'm missing some connection with domain as related
to DNS and SBS since I freely admit that my understanding of DNS is extremely
limited.

My intention is that the remote agents/representatives will not have ANY
accounts on the SBS computer/doman. They will not have any POP/email
accounts of any type so they will not impenge on the user limit. All of the
agent/representative email accounts would be POP accounts on a standard linux
web server and the spam would be taken care of on that box.

So does anyone have a term for this or have an example of how I would setup
the DNS?

David.

My understanding is that I would just set up subdomains on the internet
server (that we currently use for all the POP email) and then setup a MX
record for each of the subdomains and point them to the POP email (
@??.widget.com).

Only the @widget.com would point to the SBS box.

Right?