Email of a Domain Network

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AllNightNerding

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#17559 1-Dec-2007 13:55

I have a domain network for our house which had all the computers connected to it.

our main problem is (there are many) is that we need to be able to use Microsoft Outlook from any computer in the house with all the emails of that person automatically loaded in.

so that basically anyone can loginto there user on any pc and have there emails on Microsoft Outlook.

Just wondering what would be the best way to do this.

Thanks
Riley

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#97788 1-Dec-2007 13:58

Where is your email hosted now?

AllNightNerding

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#97791 1-Dec-2007 14:14

we have 3 server 2003 standard edition servers which are our domain conrollers running 2 domains in a forest and the we have emails hosted with gmail, hotmail and xnet however we will be moving to getting hosting for our own domain soon. we have outlook 2007 and have vista ultimate and xp professional clients.

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tonyhughes

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#97793 1-Dec-2007 14:23

Ok.... by 'hosting', are you talking about putting your own mailserver inhouse? If so, exchange? or something else?

If hosting your mail with a third party, do you know who that will be?

There are quite a few options - MS Exchange '03 with OWA would be the cleanest solution for you, but there is some $$ involved.

Next is any mail hosting solution with anyone. and simply create user accounts for everyone on each machine (only suitable for small numbers of users.

Webmail is another - though most webmail interfaces are a bit lacking for full-on business use.

AllNightNerding

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Ultimate Geek

#97794 1-Dec-2007 14:32

yea we would be looking at having our hosting with ace-host (ace-host.net) which is a company i have used alot.

isa it possible to have web hosting and then have you emails on one of our servers here.

we would in a perfect world like to have our emails through the google apps program which is alot better than the domain webmail with ace-host (horde, squirrel mail)

is there anyway we can have our emails on the google apps and set the account up on one computer and the outlook .pst data file is stored on the server say under \\servername\emails\%username%.pst

can that be done?

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tonyhughes

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#97798 1-Dec-2007 15:30

AllNightNerding: yea we would be looking at having our hosting with ace-host (ace-host.net) which is a company i have used alot.

isa it possible to have web hosting and then have you emails on one of our servers here.

we would in a perfect world like to have our emails through the google apps program which is alot better than the domain webmail with ace-host (horde, squirrel mail)

is there anyway we can have our emails on the google apps and set the account up on one computer and the outlook .pst data file is stored on the server say under \\servername\emails\%username%.pst

can that be done?

Personally I would forget Google Apps in your situation.

Heres what i would consider doing for a low budget situation:

Run hMailServer, and either use your static IP address, or get a spare domain name, or subdomain that points to you mailserver box (hMailserver is a fairly light windows app). Setup mail forwarding from all your new mail accounts (but leave the mail in the box as well, as a backup). Forward each mail address to a corresponding mailbox in house.

e.g. allnightnerding@companyxyz.co.nz forwards to allnightnerding@companyxyz2.co.nz

Outlook client connects to local mail server to send and recieve mail, outgoing mail can be sent directly if you are not port 25 blocked, or relay to your ISP via hMailservers built in relay option.

Outlook clients would connect to say 192.168.0.50 (whatever your mailserver internal IP is) with username of the local mailserver. 'Email address' and 'Reply-to address' would be username@companyxyz.co.nz.

This gives you the benefit of cheap hosted mail in boxes out in the cloud, and local mailserver functions, with super-fast transfers of mail from a client point of view, and if your mail server falls over, you can point the clients directly at the external host. If the external host is inaccessible, your mail may still be forwarded, or if its completely down, you could change your MX record quickly to point to your mail server or another host.

Sounds screwy, but its cheap, it works well, and gives you to ability to recover from an outage reasonably quickly.

Could do it with Google Apps - their webmail is great, but I am just not fond of the reliability or lackof I find with their pop/imap systems.

hMailserver could be ditched for any mailserver - exchange, Clarkconnect, Postfix whatever...

tonyhughes

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#97799 1-Dec-2007 15:31

Squirrelmail might look spartan, but if your host has it configured correctly, its a brilliant, fast, well featured webmail client.

AllNightNerding

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Ultimate Geek

#97801 1-Dec-2007 15:57

yera but we need it on Microsoft outlook because of PDA Syncronization

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signz

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#97818 1-Dec-2007 19:36

I use Kerio in our house - despite the fact that I have "free" access to Exchange server. I have SMTP based mail sent directly to the server for most of my mail but also have the server pick up some other accounts using POP. I can also use ETRN so collect SMTP mail that has been colected by an external service.

I chose Kerio primarily because it was NOT Microsoft. It's my small protest against the MS beast .

We have about 8 PCs and I can use Outlook from any to send and receive mail ... as can anyone else. Kerio has a good web-mail client and supports POP3 and IMAP for your workstations as well as a connector to allow Outlook to access it. This lets me have shared calendars, contacts and email access from Outlook. It all nicely synchs to my cellphone (yet to get IMAP connected to the phone but that's because of time, not issues). Web mail client access same email, calendar and contacts as Outlook.

The Outlook Connector for Kerio is NOT 100% wonderful ... it's slow if you have lots of email. I have LOTS and it can get a bit sluggish at times. (This is known problem and well documented in their support forums). Until recently I used Eudora to send / receive email via IMAP and this was a better email client for Kerio but I wanted the calendar etc.

So, it comes down to cost and preference.

For reference, there are also hosted Exchange services out there whcih will give you the same services as having an in-house Exchange or Kerio server ... just doesn;t require purchase.

Good luck.

Dale

sbiddle

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#97822 1-Dec-2007 20:51

AllNightNerding:
is there anyway we can have our emails on the google apps and set the account up on one computer and the outlook .pst data file is stored on the server say under \\servername\emails\%username%.pst

Storing .pst files on a network drive is highly risky, MS themselves even highly recommend you don't do it.

There is a good rundown of issues involved here

AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#97826 1-Dec-2007 21:30

so it is loocking as though we will have to have our settings for our email redirected to our server andhave exchange running on that or something similar to that.

how does exchange make it any differant to having the .pst files?

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signz

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#97870 2-Dec-2007 08:47

Exchange, Kerio and other IMAP-based systems use a client-server approach to access the mail. For example, the workstation may say "any new mail for me" and the server will read through the messages and send back a yes / no. Likewise if you say "find all email from Bob" then a message like that is sent to the server, it finds the messages and sends back details.

This is why you can have a remote Exchange server (even hosted: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/services/default.mspx) and it still performs OK.

PST files are designed to be saved on your local disk. When Outlook wants something it directly reads and writes the file and does the searches. This works well for local files but not across a LAN or WAN,

Mail servers are designed for multiple concurrent users. PST files are not.

Dale

AllNightNerding

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Ultimate Geek

#97898 2-Dec-2007 15:21

right, we have mainly office 2007 so i am guessing it would be best to get exchange 07 but has it been released yet?

Our servers arnt all on 24/7 so does this pose any problems in regards to the email?

I take it that xnet our service provider will be fine with us hosting out emails? *hopes*

Thanks once again.

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tonyhughes

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#97899 2-Dec-2007 15:32

Do you have 64bit servers?

tonyhughes

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#97900 2-Dec-2007 15:33

And your mail server really should be on 24/7 unless you have a backup MX offsite somewhere. If your mail server is not up, you run the risk of losing mail as undeliverable...

AllNightNerding

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Ultimate Geek

#97903 2-Dec-2007 15:52

no we have 3 32-bit servers.

the problem i have is that the servers are in my room and when i sleep they tend to be noisy lol.

I have one compaq small form factor worstation pc which used to hbe our useless server.

but have just added 1 IBM 1u rackmount with a 3.0ghz processor 1.2gbs of ram and 2 500gb hdds. which is the x306 model

the other rackmount is the same except is 2.0ghz and is the x305 model.

I may need to look at moving the servers........ i've been looking round at the microsoft sites and am gaining a better idea of what this will involve as well. not painting a happy picture lol.

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