Questions[exchange](server)

I know that it has been officially unsupported forever and yet I have seen or heard about many small business installations of a single host running AD DS and Exchange simultaneously. For a resource-strapped small business the savings are compelling.

So assuming that we know somehow that usage requirements will never grow beyond 25 users, say 10 simultaneously,

1. How "bad" is it really these days to run both Exchange and AD DS on the same machine (sans virtualization of any kind)?
2. What specifically is bad about it? (Name the top 1 or 2 reasons that come to mind besides "Microsoft says so")
3. What can be done to mitigate the "bad"ness, if anything?

You can assume that the business in question either:

1. has a single physical on-site server with a reasonable commercial ISP or
2. has a pool of virtual resources that is already tapped out and they do not want to spend more.

The situation I have in mind is the second, with just one VM that could possibly be a candidate for adding Exchange because it is the only Windows VM and has enough excess memory to make it happen.

In any case, the reasoning may not be all that, well, reasonable, but let's say those are the constraints you have to work with.

We have a load-balanced Exchange 2013 SP1 cluster, running MAPI over HTTP.

Client connectivity inside our own network works just fine, while clients connected over Direct Access does not connect. The Outlook logs on the client show absolutely no error at all.

The Direct Access server is running 2012 R2, the clients are all Windows 8.1. Everything is patched.

I've been searching like crazy the last couple of weeks, and the only interesting hits I get are about TMG 2010 (UAG) filtering out the requests due to the source IP changing (the exchange load balancer). There is a Knowledge Base Article (982604) that describes this, and a rather hefty blog post about the issue from premier support, but sadly the script does not work on our server since it's not TMG and it's Windows Server 2012 R2..

I'm at a loss here. I'll give this question a week, then I'll raise a premier support case with Microsoft.

Here is my current code:

Write-output “ENTER THE FOLLOWING DETAILS - When Creating Multiple New Accounts Go to           EMC hit F5(refresh) and make sure previous new account is listed before proceeding to the       next one”
$DName = Read-Host “User Diplay Name(New User)"
$RUser = Read-Host "Replicate User(Database Grab)"
$RData = ((Get-Mailbox -Identity $RUser).Database).DistinguishedName
$REmailInput = Read-Host “Requester's Name(Notification Email goes to this Person)"
$REmail = ((Get-Mailbox -Identity "$REmailInput").PrimarySmtpAddress).ToString()

Enable-Mailbox -Identity "$DName" -Database "$RData" 
Set-CASMailbox -Identity "$DName" -ActiveSyncEnabled $false -ImapEnabled $false -    PopEnabled $false


Send-MailMessage -From "John Doe <[email protected]>" -To $REmail -Subject       "$DName's email account" -Body "$DName's email account has been setup.`n`n`nJohn Doe`nXYZ`nSystems Administrator`nOffice: 123.456.7890`[email protected]" -SmtpServer [email protected]

This code works flawlessly about half the time, but the other half I get this error in return:

ENTER THE FOLLOWING DETAILS - When Creating Multiple New Accounts Go to EMC hit
F5(refresh) and make sure previous new account is listed before proceeding to
the next one
User Diplay Name(New User): Jane Doe
Replicate User(Database Grab): Julie Doe
Requester's Name(Notification Email goes to this Person): Joanna Doe

Name                      Alias                ServerName       ProhibitSendQuo
                                                            ta
----                      -----                ----------       ---------------
Jane Doe                  JDDAFA               [email protected]      unlimited
Set-CASMailbox : Jane Doe is not a mailbox user.
At C:\emailclientbasic.ps1:11 char:15
+ Set-CASMailbox <<<<  -Identity "$DName" -ActiveSyncEnabled $false -ImapEnable
d $false -PopEnabled $false
+ CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (0:Int32) [Set-CASMailbox], Manage
mentObjectNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : 292DF1AC,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Recipient
Tasks.SetCASMailbox

So if anyone could help me throw in some kind of wait command after the mailbox is created and wait until the user's mailbox is created before the script disables ActiveSync, etc it would be really helpful. I believe that simply using the -wait switch does not work.

Sendmail supports a feature called 'plussed users'. Once enabled, emails sent to

• [email protected],
• [email protected] and
• [email protected]

are automatically delivered just like mails to [email protected]. There is no need to register or set up these 'plus suffixes'. The user can just use them and set up client-side filtering rules on his own.

Does Exchange support a similar mechanism? If so, how to enable it?

Note that I don't want answers about other means of filtering, e.g. spam/junk filtering, server-side or client-side rules, email aliases/addresses that are configured explicitly and so on.

I've worked as a sysadmin for some years and what I keep coming back to is that users like Microsoft Outlook and want to use its Exchange features. I have tried my fair share of commercial alternatives but usually there is either a fundamental feature missing or there are stability issues.

In short I am looking for a Microsoft Exchange Alternative with the following features:

• Authentication through SQL or LDAP
• Has a solid, comfortable web interface for the users when they are off-site
• Supports replication and load balancing (if one fails, the second one should be already running)
• Outlook client support (or a really good alternative client)
• Resource booking (meeting rooms, projectors, company jet, etc)
• Calendar (shared/private) and Email (if that wasn't obvious)
• (Optional) A cross-platform client for us *nix users.
• (Optional) Corporate support contracts available
• (Optional) An open-source software is a plus

Please keep your answers as detailed as possible to determine that you've successfully deployed the software and it fulfills the needs. If I wanted a list of claimed alternatives , I would simply Google it.

I've personally tried Binary Server, Novell Groupwise, homegrown Postfix/Cyrus stuff and in the end the 'real thing' because those users just love Exchange.

Please help me find a good alternative.