can i point outlook clients to authenticate to Exchange front end
Good afternoon guys, I have a simple question that perhaps someone here can help me answer. We are using Exchange 2003 Enterprise SP2. We have a mailbox storage server and an Exchange front end, we're in the process of adding another Exchange front end.My boss wants me to find out if we can point the internal Outlook clients to the Exchange front end instead of the Exchange store server. He asked me to look into having our Outlook clients go to the Exchange front end and the front end will talk to the mailbox server and retrieve the user's mailbox. That is that all of our Outlook clients would be connected to the Exchange front ends, the front ends would then in turnconnect to thestore server and retrieve the data then return it to the Outlook client which wouldnever talk to directly to the mailbox server. From what I understand of Exchange 2003 this is not meant to work that way, the MAPI client connects to the mailbox server to get the data and the front end is just a routing server, it doesn't hold any mailboxes. He asked me to look into it but I can't find any definite document or anything in writing that can verify my inclination. I know it can be done via RPC over HTTPS, but this is not the solution he's looking for. Thanks in advance for any response, I've beenresearching this, but I can'tfind anything to confirm or deny whetherI can do it or not.
May 4th, 2009 11:30pm

Well, you're right.. outlook will not connect directly to FE server, they will connect to GC/Exchange. Period.Arun Kumar | MCSE - 2K3 + Messaging | ITIL-F V3
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May 5th, 2009 12:22am

Why wont RPC over HTTP work, that is basically what you are looking for? Mark Morowczynski|MCSE 2003:Messaging, Security|MCITP:ES, SA|MCTS:Windows Mobile Admin|Security+|http://almostdailytech.com
May 5th, 2009 2:24am

On Mon, 4-May-09 20:30:49 GMT, Exchange novice wrote:>Good afternoon guys, I have a simple question that perhaps someone here can help me answer. We are using Exchange 2003 Enterprise SP2. We have a mailbox storage server and an Exchange front end, we're in the process of adding another Exchange front end. My boss wants me to find out if we can point the internal Outlook clients to the Exchange front end instead of the Exchange store server. He asked me to look into having our Outlook clients go to the Exchange front end and the front end will talk to the mailbox server and retrieve the user's mailbox. That is that all of our Outlook clients would be connected to the Exchange front ends, the front ends would then in turn connect to the store server and retrieve the data then return it to the Outlook client which would never talk to directly to the mailbox server. From what I understand of Exchange 2003 this is not meant to work that way, the MAPI client connects to the mailbox server to get the data and the front end is>just a routing server, it doesn't hold any mailboxes. He asked me to look into it but I can't find any definite document or anything in writing that can verify my inclination. I know it can be done via RPC over HTTPS, but this is not the solution he's looking for. Thanks in advance for any response, I've been researching this, but I can't find anything to confirm or deny whether I can do it or not.
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May 5th, 2009 3:06am

Hi, The MAPI client can only connect to mailbox server get data. Even if you configure the Outlook client to connect to Exchange Front End server, the Front End server will redirect the Outlook client to connect to Back End mailbox server and adjust the Outlook profile setting automatically. Therefore, would you please let me know why you want to have Outlook clients connect to Exchange Front End Server instead of the Back End mailbox server? Whether is it due to security concerns? I can try to check whether we are able to find a workaround regarding the issue. Mike
May 5th, 2009 11:14am

Thank you very much for your replies guys, it's as I suspected. My boss seems to think that he can load balance by adding more Exchange front ends (definetaly not my idea) by pointing the Outlook clients directly to the Exchange front end servers. Perhaps he read something somewhere and he misunderstood. I can probably suggest RPC over HTTP, but I don't think there would be any reason to do that for Outlook clients that are in our internal network. Thanks once again for your responses.
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May 5th, 2009 8:59pm

You can do NLB on the front end servers to have multiple front end servers to disperse the load as well as redundancy. How many clients do you have connecting? Mark Morowczynski|MCSE 2003:Messaging, Security|MCITP:ES, SA|MCTS:Windows Mobile Admin|Security+|http://almostdailytech.com
May 5th, 2009 9:01pm

Therefore, would you please let me know why you want to have Outlook clients connect to Exchange Front End Server instead of the Back End mailbox server? Whether is it due to security concerns? I can try to check whether we are able to find a workaround regarding the issue. Mike My boss wanted to know mostly for security reasons, but he's talking about internal Outlook MAPI clients, not people coming from the outside. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I wouldn't see a point in having Outlook clients that have access to the data store server having to go through RPC over HTTP through the front end if they can connect directly to the mailbox server through an internal secure network. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.
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May 5th, 2009 9:01pm

Yea if its a security concern I dont think you need to worry about Outlook making a MAPI connection. Mark Morowczynski|MCSE 2003:Messaging, Security|MCITP:ES, SA|MCTS:Windows Mobile Admin|Security+|http://almostdailytech.com
May 5th, 2009 9:03pm

Hi, Yes, we do not recommend the internal Outlook clients to connect to their mailboxes through RPC over HTTPs. By using ROH, the Outlook clients connect to Backend mailbox server through Front End Server. For normal MAPI connection, the Outlook clients connect to Backend mailbox server directly. Therefore, by using ROH, it will increase load of the Front End Server. Mike
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May 6th, 2009 6:14am

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