For the group case study, we are team E, and we renamed our group to 3JayTeam and we are using strictly Windows Server 2008. We currently have 3 servers, the domain controller, exchange server, and edge transport servers. After making 3 clones of our base image of Server 2008 and applying NewSid.exe, we created Active Directory on the first clone and our domain is called 3JayTeam. The IP information for our environment is 172.19.117.121-125 /24. The domain controller is the 172.19.117.122 address, the exchange server has the 172.19.117.123 address, and the edge transport has the 172.19.117.124 address. The domain controller has 2 network adapters, one for external, one for internal. The exchange server has one adapter, the internal one. The Edge transport is also the same way, with one network adapter, pointing towards the internal network. Before you can install any further services, you need to verify network connectivity. Pinging the addresses on the internal network will ensure that all machines can join the domain and communicate with eachother. Once you have connectivity, it is wise to install all the security updates and service packs on all machines. On the second clone, before we installed Exchange 2007, we had to extract the .zip folder and install the components inside, which include .NET Framework 3.0, Powershell, and 2 hotfixes. You cannot install Exchange without having these installed first. Without them, it will completely fail. For the Edge Transport layer, the install is similar in that you need to have these four components installed for it to work properly.
After having the basics of our environment in place, we actually get into the logistics of building it. On the domain controller, we created the 4 folder shares. These are used to share information and files from machine to machine. RRAS was also installed on this machine, which is useful for the Edge and Exchange machines to access external networks via the internal connection. Once you have set up the Exchange server, you need to create 5 mail enabled users, 5 mailbox users, and 2 external contacts with the names of Bob.Tester@exchange2007.local and Mktg@exchange2007.local. Once that is in place, create 2 distribution groups along with a filter that removes all emails with the word "babayaga." The next step would be to create a disclaimer that identifies whether an email is internal or external. Once that is all in place, Outlook Web Access (OWA) must be configured. OWA allows users to check email and calendar services anywhere from their web browser from both external and internal networks.
For our team responsibilities, Jason made the base images and configured the domain controller and exchange setups. James created the mailboxes and users, and also the 4 network shares. Jesse created this essay, the blog and helped research the possible extra credit that we may implement. All three of us did small details, such as IP and DNS testing, and came up with the naming conventions.
