Hi I am new to exchange and trying to deploy exchange 2003 on server 2003 sp2. so first let me explain my scenario. My AD domain is single label, suppose xyz-ab and my internet domain name is ABC.com . At the moment our web hosting and email hosting is done by hosting company. we got one domain controller and exchange server will be installed on this.its FQDN is exchange.xyz-ab and now we want to move only email hosting to our new exchange server. i read many articles about exchange deployment but there are some following issues in my mind. 1 for email forwarding to my exchange server i need to create A record and MX records. but it will not accept my server FQDN bcoz its not registered. so how can i create MX record for my single label domain or any other non registered domain like domain.local. My thinking - is we need to create A record for exchange.xyz-ab which will point to my public address and then create MX record for exchange.xyz-ab. but my hosting provider does not provide facility of creating A record, i mean only MX record we can create. so how this could be done? 2 How many SSL certificates do i need for OWA, OMA, RPC over HTTP ? i guess one will be fine and it would be for my internet domain name which is ABC.com. 3 as i mentioned our website will be hosted by same company. so how would i use OWA and RPC over HTTP ? i mean for owa url will be http://abc.com/exchange. but this will take us to public ip address of our website host company. how can we direct this url to our public ip of exchange . 4 do i need DNS spliting? Please advise if i m missing anything. it will be great help. Thanks in advance

First question, this article will explain everything you need (it applies to Exchange 2003 also)- http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/MF002.html Second question, One SSL certificate will be sufficient ( I prefer Go Daddy)- link for doing this http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/SSL-Enabling-OWA-2003-Using-Free-3rdParty-Certificate.html Third question, users will go to https://mail.yourdomain.com/exchange to access OWA externally. I would personally create another A Record for webmail.yourdomain.com which is much easier for users to remember. 4. No need for Split DNS. As for other things you need to consider, a good firewall and antispam/av software or service. I prefer Spam Soap for AV/Antispam filtering but there are many out there.MVP Exchange Server

thanx John for replying. i read the above article. But still i m not clear abt my 1st questions. according to article i need to create A and MX record on my dns hosting and it should be like this exchange.xyz-ab Host(A) my public ip abc.com MX (10) exchange.xyz-ab so my question is that can i create A record of exchange.xyz-ab to receive mails for abc.com. remember that xyz-ab is my internal domain(non registered). and for owa my url will be https://exchange.xyz-ab/exchange

Hi, Yes you can configure your exchange server to receive mails for abc.com through recipient policies configuration in Exchange 2003. To configure recipient policies refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249299Nagaraj N

Hi Nagraj thanx for reply. plz comment about my MX record setup and owa access url Pawan

The correct format for your A Record would be mail.yourdomain.com, other than that it looks good. OWA access for users would be https://mail.yourdomain.com/exchange.MVP Exchange Server