Hi folks, I am building a new domain from scratch. PDC on physical server with a VMWare ESX cluster on another huge server. On there I have SDC, Exchange server, and other servers. The Exchange 2007 server also has AD LDS installed (Exchange server is not an AD server) DNS on PDC and SDC, DHCP server also SDC, 2003 server holds WSUS server etc. all hiding behind a Cisco 5505 firewall and NAT (just trying to be thorough) Exchange server is not using an external 'front end' server for mail. I have mail successfully being sent to the Internet from the mail server. Here's my issues. FQDN name is like this: companyname.local and I have an external name called my-company.com. My Exchange server is called srvex01.companyname.local. What I want to have is exchange server FQDN srvex01.my-company.com for mx record purposes (adding to DNS settings on domain name website) Also I'd like people to be able to access OWA by typing something like mail.my-company.com into a web browser. So how do I change the name of the exchange server from srvex01.companyname.local to srvex01.my-company.com? How do I make it so mail can be directed to that mx record? How do I allow people to be able to use mail.my-company.com FQDN? Thanks for any help you can provide. I'm sure I've missed some vital info from this list so if so please add and I'll get back to you ASAP.

You don't change the name of your Exchange server. There is no need to. All you are talking about is DNS. The actual real name of the server doesn't matter. Use your firewall to NAT the internal IP address to the external, then configure the DNS in your Internet facing DNS to point to that IP address. You will have to configure the external URLs as required - that is all documented on Technet. Once you have decided on the URLs to use, then you can purchase the required SSL certificate with those names. http://blog.sembee.co.uk/post/Exchange-2007-and-SSL-Certificates-Take-2.aspx You don't do anything to your MX record other than change the host name. Therefore as long as you have the host name configured correctly, and port 25 open, then email will flow. To be honest, most of your questions are completely unrelated to Exchange. They are simple DNS questions which would apply whether you were using Exchange, Notes, SmarterMail, Kerio or anything else. The setup is almost the same. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP. http://blog.sembee.co.uk , http://exbpa.com/

I suppose, your questions are answered by Simon. When you think about publishing your OWA, think about security reasons, too. In Exchange 2007 there's no Front-End Server... You have to use a reverse proxy (perfect for this actions... Forefront TMG)Thanks and regards! Don't forget to mark or vote :)

Hi, Thanks for the advice, I'm still confused however. "You will have to configure the external URLs as required - that is all documented on Technet." I've spent hours, no days looking at Technet without finding what I need as I'm not etirely sure what I'm looking for? I understand the part about the firewall, pointing any traffic directed by Internet facing DNS to the IP address, point it to the exchange server default web site. That's not a problem. Currently the A records on the Internet DNS side point to the company we purchased the domain name from, I know I'm to change that to my companies IP address. Then the MX records need to be changed to point to the mail server, this is where I get lost. I create MX record on my internel DNS this is where I make the name mail.my-company.com correct? The A record points to the exchange server?

Hi, Thanks for the advice.

Hi, Well Im back with issues with my changes. I followed the advice given here, thanks again, however after all my changes I'm still not getting mail to my mail server. Here is what I've done so far. In Internet facing DNS, added A record with mail server name mail.my-company.com and external IP address. Added mx record mail.my-company.com as highest priority. I left in the old mx records with lower priority to allow mail to flow to my old server if my new mail server doesn't work for now (which it doesn't) On firewall, I added a direct IP address to my mail server through bypassing NAT. I can resolve to this now if I go to owa and also https://[externalIPaddress] I can also resolve the mail.my-company.com to my mail server. I have also opened port 25 and pointed it to my mail server's internal IP address. However mail is not flowing to my new mail server? I noticed I cannot resolve the external IP address from inside the network, don't know if that is relevant? If I use nslookup I can see that my mail server address is correct and the IP address. If I try to open a telnet session with port 25 it fails each time. So I'm assuming it's an issue with my Firewall, however I'm not sure if it's an internal DNS issue? The MX record on my internal DNS server, should that just have the internal mail server's name for Internal mail?

DNS has nothing to do with your firewall. If you cannot telnet to port 25 then the port isn't open correctly. You should be able to telnet to either the host name or the IP address. You don't need to have an MX record on your internal DNS for Exchange to work correctly. The problem is purely down to your firewall configuration. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources