I have a multi site Exchange 2003 environment. In the US, our external users can access http://webmail.domain.com, which is OWA on a front end server. They can log into their mailbox, which is located on any of several mail servers. Everything works fine here. I have a remote office in China, which has a different public address http://china.domain.com, pointing to an Exchange backend server in that country. This is working fine. However, I have built up a new Exchange 2003 server in that office, and need to migrate user mailboxes. However, if I change our firewall to point to this new OWA server, end users can only log into OWA if they have a mailbox on that server. For now, the firewall points to the old/existing OWA server, where all the mailboxes are currently located. I have to plan the mailbox migration around this, but I'd like to know if there is a way to set my new Exchange backend in that office to be the main OWA server in that country, and have end users log into their mailbox regardless of whether their mailbox is located on the new or old server. Internally, if I point my browser to http://ExchangeOld, I can sign into OWA using an account with a mailbox on that server. If I sign into http://ExchangeOld with credentials for a mailbox on ExchangeNew, I get redirected to http://ExchangeNew, and prompted for credentials one more time. Once I sign in the second time, OWA loads. The behavior seems the same when logging into http://china.domain.com to a mailbox on ExchangeOld, OWA displays. If I try to log into http://china.domain.com using credentials of a user whose mailbox is on ExchangeNew, I get "IE cannot display the webpage" shortly after supplying userid/password. Any help would be appreciated. I'm hoping the answer isn't that this only works if logging into a front end Exchange server hosting OWA. Thanks, Joel

If the OWA server you are pointing to is a front-end server--and front-end servers can't host mailboxes--then it will proxy the mail for the mailbox server. If the OWA server you are pointing to is not a front-end server, i.e., a mailbox server, then it will attempt to redirect the HTTP session to the back-end server of the mailbox. Do you have any firewalls or name resolution issues that would prevent this from working properly? -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Joe IT" wrote in message news:3b638ee2-6021-4245-a3a1-2ecd6088fa26... I have a multi site Exchange 2003 environment. In the US, our external users can access http://webmail.domain.com, which is OWA on a front end server. They can log into their mailbox, which is located on any of several mail servers. Everything works fine here. I have a remote office in China, which has a different public address http://china.domain.com, pointing to an Exchange backend server in that country. This is working fine. However, I have built up a new Exchange 2003 server in that office, and need to migrate user mailboxes. However, if I change our firewall to point to this new OWA server, end users can only log into OWA if they have a mailbox on that server. For now, the firewall points to the old/existing OWA server, where all the mailboxes are currently located. I have to plan the mailbox migration around this, but I'd like to know if there is a way to set my new Exchange backend in that office to be the main OWA server in that country, and have end users log into their mailbox regardless of whether their mailbox is located on the new or old server. Internally, if I point my browser to http://ExchangeOld, I can sign into OWA using an account with a mailbox on that server. If I sign into http://ExchangeOld with credentials for a mailbox on ExchangeNew, I get redirected to http://ExchangeNew, and prompted for credentials one more time. Once I sign in the second time, OWA loads. The behavior seems the same when logging into http://china.domain.com to a mailbox on ExchangeOld, OWA displays. If I try to log into http://china.domain.com using credentials of a user whose mailbox is on ExchangeNew, I get "IE cannot display the webpage" shortly after supplying userid/password. Any help would be appreciated. I'm hoping the answer isn't that this only works if logging into a front end Exchange server hosting OWA. Thanks, Joel Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Thank you for the reply. I suspected that was what was going on. Since the front end server is here in the US, we have our China office use their own OWA server for performance reasons. I ended up moving all the mailboxes over a weekend, so it didn't affect the users anyway. They all have large mailboxes and I was afraid they wouldn't all migrate overnight. Thanks, Joel