Impact of deploying a second front-end Exchange 2003 server with a different SSL certificate
Here is our environment:
Exchange 2003 SP2 organization
4 back-end servers and 1 front-end server
ISA 2000 connecting OWA to the front-end server
All servers running Server 2k3 SP1
I would like to upgrade to ISA 2006 and would also like to use a separate certificate to test the connectivity to avoid downtime and also because the new certificate has the SAN option that will work for Exchange 2K7 which we are roadmapping for deployment early 2009.
My question is what the impact would be of adding a separate front-end server (which will be a VM) and associating the new SSL certificate with it? For example, our current FE server has a cert with webmail.maxhealth.com. The new server will have a cert with a CN of mail.maxhealth.com and will use the new ISA 2006 server for the SSL connection. This way I can test the connection without impacting the users.
Any help or info regarding this would be greatly appreciated!
April 11th, 2008 6:30pm
Hi,
There should be no impact at all as long as you only configure this new server as a front-end server (only used as OWA, ActiveSync etc server).
Users will not know that the new server is there as long as you don't tell them or configure something to force the users to use the new server.
Leif
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April 12th, 2008 2:03pm
Thanks. I deployed it with no issues except that the OWA interface is garbled and seems to be stuck on loading the inbox. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the fact that the new FE server is Server 2003 SP2 and all of the other Exchange servers are SP1. Could this be the problem?
April 17th, 2008 3:46pm
RichC wrote:
Thanks. I deployed it with no issues except that the OWA interface is garbled and seems to be stuck on loading the inbox. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the fact that the new FE server is Server 2003 SP2 and all of the other Exchange servers are SP1. Could this be the problem?
I found the workaround for this in case anyone else has this same problem.
http://blogs.isaserver.org/shinder/2006/05/30/owa-site-appears-garbled-and-mailbox-stuck-on-loading/
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April 18th, 2008 3:54pm