Questions[exchange-2003](server)

Background

My VPN connection does not have its own Network adapter as a result all DNS queries are sent down my Internet connection. My VPN connection works fine handling requests to a specific IP address range: 192.168.x.x.

The Question

I want to specify my Server in my outlook account settings using an IP address so Outlook can connect to Exchange over my VPN. However when I change the setting it goes off finds the host names and uses that instead - as a result when trying connect over VPN cannot connect as cannot resolve the host name. How can I force it to use the IP address??

I'm reading Learning Exchange Server 2003 by Boswell, and there's a section in there that mentions that a disabled account in AD cannot receive email and that it will be bounced back. Currently, what usually happens when a person leaves our company is that the account gets disabled, moved to an archive OU, and the email is forwarded on the Exchange General tab to someone else. It appears to have been working all this time, but I'm wondering why the book would say otherwise... We are using a single Exchange 2003 SP2 server.

Under what circumstances would a disabled user account cease to receive email?

Having read Jeff's blog post about Email and DKIM, I'm thinking it might be good to DKIM all mail coming out of our Exchange 2003 servers. Whats a good way of going about that?

The scene: A merger of two companies. One running Exchange 2010, the other Exchange 2003, both having Active Directory Schemas at Server 2003, SP 2.

Short term goal: Establish a trust between both domains to allow each company to access each other’s Global Address List (GAL) and Free/Busy Data. Then find a way to send/receive mail using the same domain name.

Long term goal: Migrate both companies to a third domain and Exchange 2010 environment.

Question: How would one setup the two current Exchange servers to not only receive mail on their old domains but to also send and receive mail using the new domain? The trick being when mail is sent between them, it needs to stay within the internal network.

Bonus Question: How would this be done if both Exchange servers were at 2010?

I help manage a small network of about 40 computers. We are running an Exchange 2003 mail server.

What is the best way to find which machine is infected by a spambot? I've tried installing anti-virus and anti-malware programs on each computer. After scanning the computers I did find a few that had lots of malicious programs and thought that our problem was solved. However our domain keeps getting blocked by DNS Blacklists and I have to remove them daily for our clients to receive our e-mail.

Note: We are being attacked by Directory Harvest and Backscatter tactics.

edit: Our e-mail server doubles as a DNS server. Could this possibly open up vulnerabilities for spam attacks?