We now offer Microsoft Outlook / Exchange as a hosted service, from just £9 + VAT per mailbox per month.

The advantages of this Exchange hosting service include:-

• All hardware, software, IT management included
• Free Outlook 2007 or Entourage for Mac 
• Enterprise-grade infrastructure & Expert Microsoft Gold certified support – 24x7. Your Email is always safe and fully backed up.
• Up to 4 GB space per mailbox (fully-aggregated)
• Microsoft SharePoint for document storage (as an extra service)
• Free premium antivirus and antispam defense
• Full Blackberry integration (as an extra service)
• Accessible from anywhere nature via Outlook or Outlook Web Access

As well as professional email, hosted Exchange gives you shared calendars, task lists, contacts and files, with no management from yourself – we set it up and manage it for you.

To learn more about getting full-featured professional email for a low monthly fee, with no start-up costs, please call us at 020 3355 9222

Most individuals that use their Blackberry in a small businesses environment would not buy Blackberry Enterprise Server for Exchange as it is simply too expensive and quite pointless for one or two users. Here is one method to bypass this and use the (UK) mobile phone providers Blackberry infrastructure and run it in conjunction with your Exchange system. (I'll also mention here that runPCrun can provide fully managed Microsoft Exchange hosting*  with the ability to add full "over the air" Blackberry synchronisation - starting at £14 p/mailbox/month, call us if you are interested in this.)

The main main advantages of the following set-up compared to just setting up standard POP3 collection are:-

• immediate (push) delivery of messages (rather that waiting for the Blackberry service to poll the POP3 provider)
• No need to open POP3 ports through your firewall
• Items sent via your Blackberry are kept in your Sent Items in Outlook/Exchange.

This is attained with a little bit of tweaking and performs very well, although (obviously) the calendar,notes and tasks are not synchronised over the Internet as with the full blown server. In a small company this is not an issue and the synchronisation can occur easily using the cradle.

What this method does in a nutshell - when an email is received, it is forwarded immediately to a mobile providers blackberry address. When a new mail or reply is sent from the Blackberry, it is sent masquerading as the Exchange email, and a copy is BCC'ed to the Exchange email address. This email is the sorted into the Sent Items folder using a server side rule.

The steps to attain this are thus:-

Small businesses sometimes have to run Exchange 2003 on a single Windows 2003 server which is also running as a DC. There is a slow shutdown problem which Daniel Petri solves with his page containing Method #2: Manually stop Exchange related services. Note: This behaviour has been solved by Exchange 2003 SP2.

runPCrun Notes for Configuring Server and Outlook for RPC over HTTPS

First read these pages for full details.

• RPC over HTTPS by Simon Butler, Exchange MVP
• Outlookexchange.com - RPC over HTTP
• MS Exchange.org Tutorials - Troubleshooting RPC over HTTPS Part 1
• MS Exchange.org Tutorials - Troubleshooting RPC over HTTPS Part 2

Set up

You need: (assuming a single server setup)

1. Windows 2003 with SP1
2. Outlook 2003
3. Windows XP with SP2
• RPC over HTTP Proxy needs to be installed on the serverh
• Outlook Web Access needs to be working and tested
• The certificate on the server needs to be installed in Internet Explorer on the client if it a self created one We prefer to purchase a certificate.
  
• Make sure the name on the certificate is the same as the External User Name that you use later

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\RpcProxy Key:ValidPorts 

For the following where :-

• 'server' is the internal name for the server
• 'domain.local' is the internal domain name
• 'mail.external.com' is the external domain name as per the certificate

• Quick Tip:Use this tool to do this http://www.petri.co.il/software/rpcnofrontend.zip

server:100-5000;
server:6001-6002;
server:6004;
server.domain.local:6001-6002;
server.domain.local:6004;
mail.external.com:6001-6002;
mail.external.com:6004;

IIS RPC.dll

Configure the RPC virtual directory in Internet Information Services
After you configure the Exchange computer to use RPC over HTTP, you must configure the RPC virtual directory in Internet Information Services. To do this, follow these steps:
1.      Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
2.      Expand servername (local computer), expand Web Sites, expand Default Web Site, right-click Rpc, and then click Properties.
3.      Click the Directory Security tab, and then click Edit under Authentication and access control.
4.      Click to clear the Enable anonymous access check box.
5.      Click to select the Basic authentication (password is sent in clear text) check box.
You receive the following message:
The authentication option you have selected results in passwords being transmitted over the network without data encryption. Someone attempting to compromise your system security could use a protocol analyzer to examine user passwords during the authentication process. For more detail on user authentication, consult the online help. This warning does not apply to HTTPS(orSSL) connections.
Are you sure you want to continue?
Note In this error message, the word "HTTPS(orSSL)" is a misspelling for the words "HTTPS (or SSL)."
6.      Click Yes, and then click OK.
7.      Click Apply, and then click OK.
The RPC virtual directory is configured to use basic authentication. We recommend that you use SSL together with basic authentication. To enable SSL on the RPC virtual directory, you must obtain and publish a certificate. This procedure assumes that you have obtained and published certificate. To configure the RPC virtual directory to require SSL for all client-side connections, follow these steps:
1.      Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
2.      Expand Web Sites, expand Default Web Site, right-click Rpc, and then click Properties.
3.      Click the Directory Security tab, and then click Edit under Secure communications.
4.      Click to select the Require secure channel (SSL) check box and the Require 128-bit encryption check box.
Note We recommend that you click to select the Require 128-bit encryption check box. However, RPC over HTTP functions correctly even if you do not require 128-bit encryption.
5.      Click OK, click Apply, and then click OK.

Client Set Up

It is recommended to set the client up on the network;

1. In Outlook 2003, choose "Tools", "Email Accounts..."
2. Ensure that "View or Change existing email accounts" is selected and press Next.
3. With "Microsoft Exchange Server" highlighted, click Change.
4. In the bottom right corner locate and click "More Settings..."
5. Click on the "Connection" tab, and enable the option "Connect to my Exchange mailbox using HTTP"
6. Click on "Exchange Proxy Settings..."
7. Complete the options as required for the client.
   • Remember that the server name must match the certificate

     https://<external domain name>

Tick 'connect using SSL only' Tick 'Mutually authenticate...' The principal name for proxy server is msstd:"external domain name" (no quotes) Select Basic Proxy Authentication You can start Outlook using the /rpcdiag switch to checkhow it's communicating with the server.

If you need to configure Outlook when you are not on the domain, there are a couple more steps.

1. When you create the profile and after you have selected 'Exchange Server', type in the internal server name and the username but DO NOT select 'Check Name'

2. Select 'More Settings..' and wait until the 'unavailable' error message appears. Click OK and then Cancel on the next message.

Then complete the set up as before. You will be prompted to enter logon credentials. Use the form 'domain\username' and the password. The servername and username should now be underlined - simply click 'Next' and complete the wizard.

Troubleshooting

Gotcha - check that there are no IP addresses listed in deny access within RPCproxy.dll within IIS on the default website.
Gotcha - check the path of IIS RPC extentions - it must be c:\windows\system32\rpcproxy\rpcproxy.dll not c:\windows\systems32\rpcproxy.dll
How to Verify That RPC Proxy Server Extension Is Loading Properly

Our company supports a number of Exchange servers for our clients and up until recently one of the bug bears we had was the hard encoded 16Gb database limit.

This meant that as soon as the combined total of the users email hit 16Gb, Exchange would shut itself down. There is a way to temporary increase this limit to 17Gb to allow you to delete emails and run the defrag utility to free up dead space but as soon as the server has been rebooted it's not long until it hits 16Gb and the problem returned.

Since these days 16Gb is not a massive amount of data, users send and work with large attachments in some of the industries we deal with and it started to become an issue. However, Microsoft in a rare moment of actually listening to its customers decided to increase this limit to something with a little more headroom.

Hence, from Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 you can set the limit to up to 75Gb. Microsoft decided that having a simple tab in Exchange System Manager to set this limit would be too easy, you have to set it via a registry hack.

Once you install Service Pack 2, the limit is set at 18Gb and you have to choose a new limit depending on storage space you have.

The Keys that need to be changed are for the Private mailboxes:-

Sending email to AOL customers can be a tricky business. Especially if you are say running your own mail server on an ISP connection like a lot of small businesses do, typically with Exchange on Windows 2003 Small Business Server.

AOL have given one minor tool to help you avoid the bouncebacks, (typically by changing your configuration so your email is sent through another SMTP 'smarthost' like an ISP's SMTP server)

Once you've made changes that you think are needed, you can test the outgoing IP by emailing to the AOL IP Confirmation email ipconfirm@postmaster.aol.com

You will receive an email back from ipconfirm-response@mailtest.mx.aol.com showing the IP address that they perceive you to be sending email from. This is handy when you are getting bounce backs from AOL customers if AOL have blacklisted your IP.