Exchange 2003 on a Blade server.. public IP's ??

[jeyer]

Bringing up our exchange 2003 on a BL20P 2 3.6 CPU's, 4 Gig Ram, and 300 gig mirrored hd's.. 300 e-mail accts. plenty of power. My concern is the public IP. Our current e-mail server has 2 nics in it. One on our 10.100.0.X internal network, the other on the public side 209.232.X.X On the blade it has 3 nics, setting one to the internal 10.100.X.X and one to the public 209.232.X.X not an issue. My question is how does the public IP get out.. IP the left and right switches have 10.100.X.X IP's must i configure a port on switch with a public IP. I have read all the HP white papers on Exchange on a blade, but no where ( or o missed it) does it explain this. We have 3 enclosures all running fine and all on the 10.100.X.x internal network. A little guidence please..

Jim Eyer

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom Jim,

If the default gateway of the system, set up in network properties is the public IP address, outbound mail should go out via that card.

I'm sure the exchange gui can be configured to push this as well.

In its default configuration, exchange 2003, which I unfortuneately also use will deliver mail properly if it has good DNS resolution from the public Internet.

For inbound mail, your best bet is to have your firewall forward mail to the servers internal NIC, from the external IP address listed on your domains MX record. Exposing this system to the public is a recipie for disaster.

I do this work once in a while but think I have a feel for the problem.

SEP