Exchange 2007 and 2010 and Office365 shop. 18k mailboxes, most are on 2007, and we are moving them to 2010. We have the CASArray setup on our new Exchange 2010 environment, but currently it is only setup with a DNS entry that points directly to one of our two CAS servers. When talking to the different load ballancing administrators their eyebrows went up when I told them that I needed ports 135 and ports 6005-59530 load ballanced to my two CAS servers. So, I went back and started reading and found that I can set it to use a static port, great. Should I do this? I talked to our web application people and they said limiting it to one port sounds like a bottleneck and suggested I limit it to say 1000 ports.. I find zero information on doing this with Exchange 2010. I like the idea of setting it to a static port but then also found some web pages talking about possibly having to reset it after updates are installed. I don't want to have to troubleshoot something like this after an update. So, do I make my load ballancer people configure all those ports? (they are just going to tear down what we have (OWA,ActiveSync,Autodiscover) and open it completely up on the inside network. Any input is appreciated, thanks.Jason Meyer

Hi Jason, I don't think it is a good idea to limit network ports for CAS array. Installation of a Client Access server in a perimeter network is not supported. When no firewalls are between the Exchange 2007 servers, the Exchange 2007 servers should communicate freely with one another. The firewall should be between the production environment and the clients. It is the same for Exchange 2010 CAS server. Refer to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270836 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb331973.aspxFiona Liao TechNet Community Support

Exchange 2007 and 2010 and Office365 shop. 18k mailboxes, most are on 2007, and we are moving them to 2010. We have the CASArray setup on our new Exchange 2010 environment, but currently it is only setup with a DNS entry that points directly to one of our two CAS servers. When talking to the different load ballancing administrators their eyebrows went up when I told them that I needed ports 135 and ports 6005-59530 load ballanced to my two CAS servers. So, I went back and started reading and found that I can set it to use a static port, great. Should I do this? I talked to our web application people and they said limiting it to one port sounds like a bottleneck and suggested I limit it to say 1000 ports.. I find zero information on doing this with Exchange 2010. I like the idea of setting it to a static port but then also found some web pages talking about possibly having to reset it after updates are installed. I don't want to have to troubleshoot something like this after an update. So, do I make my load ballancer people configure all those ports? (they are just going to tear down what we have (OWA,ActiveSync,Autodiscover) and open it completely up on the inside network. Any input is appreciated, thanks. Jason Meyer Hi Jason, You have to use load balancing when setting up a CAS array with more than one CAS server in it. The only true supported way is to use static ports so you can succesfully load balance on a set of defined ports. Follow this blog for the recommended ports to use: http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/planning-architecture/uncovering-new-rpc-client-access-service-exchange-2010-part2.html Pay the most attention to the section "Setting static RPC ports for MAPI and Directory Access" Oliver Oliver Moazzezi | Exchange MVP, MCSA:M, MCITP:Exchange 2010, BA (Hons) Anim | http://www.exchange2010.com | http://www.cobweb.com | http://twitter.com/OliverMoazzezi

I would suggest you refer to Microsoft article below: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/864.configure-static-rpc-ports-on-an-exchange-2010-client-access-server.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff626260.aspx Hope it is helpful.Fiona Liao TechNet Community Support

You really should look to implement the static ports as this is known to cause issues with certain LB devices. Please ensure that you work with the LB vendor and LB team to configure Exchange load balancing correctly. If this is not done, the end users will run into issues. The symptoms will be Exchange is not working, but the cause is the load balancer. Bypassing the LB with a hosts entry to a single CAS is a great way to test! The vendors that had undergone validation are listed here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/gg176682 as is the link to the vendor's documentation. As for the setting being lost, that was an issue when upgrading from Exchange 2010 RTM to SP1. You had to manually update the Address Book configuration. RTM had it in a config file - SP2 has it in the registry. After that this should be fine - if not let us know please! once you make the changes, and restart the services so that the registry is read and the changes applied, I would recommend running netstat -ano -b to ensure that the changes have kicked in and the Address Book and Mail endpoints are listening on your two static ports. I say this as the syntax is fiddly and the registry keys a very different. One is a DWORD, one is a String. One is under System the other is under parameterssystem.. you get the idea :) Cheers, Rhoderick NOTICE: My posts are provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

Thanks everyone for the input. I've seen this asked before but I just want to be sure, no performance hits for changing to static ports? My IIS guy thinks I'm crazy for even considering changing it. JJason Meyer

Thanks everyone for the input. I've seen this asked before but I just want to be sure, no performance hits for changing to static ports? My IIS guy thinks I'm crazy for even considering changing it. J Jason Meyer Hi Jason, It's the supported and preferred method. We are using it for a 100,000 mailbox solution amongst other platforms in the cloud.Oliver Moazzezi | Exchange MVP, MCSA:M, MCITP:Exchange 2010, BA (Hons) Anim | http://www.exchange2010.com | http://www.cobweb.com | http://twitter.com/OliverMoazzezi

Do you need RPC directly? If so a static port is pretty much a must if you are LB. If you don't need RPC directly, then no worries just use OLA, aka RPC over HTTPs.

Thanks everyone for the input. I've seen this asked before but I just want to be sure, no performance hits for changing to static ports? My IIS guy thinks I'm crazy for even considering changing it. J Jason Meyer Please see Oliver's post below which is totally the direction you want to go. I would ask your "IIS guy" this. How does IIS scale then? It listens on a single port either 80 TCP or 443 TCP? Cheers, Rhoderick NOTICE: My posts are provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

Do you need RPC directly? If so a static port is pretty much a must if you are LB. If you don't need RPC directly, then no worries just use OLA, aka RPC over HTTPs. Don't know, most of our users are used to connecting directly via TCP so I wanted to get it configured to be able to do this. Is there an advantage or disadvantage to using Outlook Anywhere versus a direct TCP connection on static ports? I would ask your "IIS guy" this. How does IIS scale then? It listens on a single port either 80 TCP or 443 TCP? Good point, I'm left with why are we using all of these ports by default then? Why doesn't MSoft just set it as static to begin with and allow customers to configure it to a different port if needed? Really appreciate all of the input to my questions... Currently I have one of our production servers running via static ports and so far no problems. Jason Meyer