5W/50 Series - Q&A from Configure and Manage Exchange Server 2003 on Windows SBS 2003

Below are the follow-up questions & answers from the Thursday, October 25, 2007, webcast “Configure and Manage Exchange Server 2003 on Windows SBS 2003” (https://www.msreadiness.com/CourseDetail.aspx?id=6513). This webcast is part of the 5W/50 series of events, check out all of the webcasts and download all of the PowerPoint presentations at https://www.mssmallbiz.com/sbstraining/.

Q: How do I configure Exchange Server 2003 to allow different users in my organization to send e-mails using different outbound addresses? For example, some users with @fabrikam.com and others with @contoso.com.

A: You can create E-mail Address Recipient Policies with different primary SMTP addresses. Modify the policy’s filter rules on the General tab to assign each policy to the desired users.

Q: How do I set up an MX record so my Exchange Server can send and receive e-mail?

A: You need to contact your ISP or whoever is administering the public/external DNS server for your domain and have them first create an address (A) record that points to your server’s public IP address. For example, a host name of mail.fabrikam.com with an address of 1.2.3.4. Then they need to create a mail exchanger (MX) record that specifies that host name. You do not need to modify or manually configure your Windows SBS internal DNS server, but you do need to make sure you run through the Configure E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard (CEICW).

Q: Can I use my Windows SBS 2003 server to host e-mail using Exchange but use a 3rd party to host my web site? How do I do that?

A: Yes, in fact that is recommended in most cases. You need to contact your ISP or whoever is administering the public/external DNS server for your domain and have them create an address (A) record that points to the 3rd party’s web server public IP address. For example, www.fabrikam.com with an address of 9.8.7.6. This address will be different than your mail server’s address (see previous question).

Q: Which takes more disk space, the Exchange information store database or the transaction logs?

A: In most small business environments with a regularly scheduled full backup, the information store will grow to require much more space (up to 75GB with Exchange Server 2003 SP2) than the transaction logs. But if you send/receive a high volume of large e-mails, your log files can become very large as well.

Q: Does message filtering only work with SMTP or also when using the POP3 Connector?

A: Filtering can only be enabled for SMTP.

Q: I subscribe to a mailing list that IMF intermittently blocks/bounces even though I've added the address to the Safe Senders list. How can I get IMF to stop blocking/bouncing that particular mail?

A: You would need to adjust the Gateway Blocking Configuration settings and raise the SCL rating. This would allow messages to be delivered to your mailbox, where the Store Junk E-mail Configuration settings would then be used to decide whether or not to put messages into the Junk E-mail folder.

Q: Can you move the information store database?

A: Yes, please see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/821915.

Q: What is the best practice for migrating archive or PST files for a user?

A: Please see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/328871.

Q: What's the typical size of a users mailbox? Is there a maximum size?

A: The default is 175 MB, you can increase/decrease depending on the number of users in your organization and the maximum information store size of 75GB. Please see https://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/support/6cf4d82d-db94-4a9e-b954-35a048d850bd.mspx.

Q: How do you view the Archive emails when using that setting with IMF?

A: Messages are archived in the UCEArchive folder. By default this folder is created in \exchsrvr\mailroot\vsi 1 folder - where 1 is the instance number of SMTP virtual server. Also, please see https://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/07/18/407838.aspx and https://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2004/06/imf_archive_man.html.