Configuration of the Client Access server in the Exchange 2013 Preview Part 1

EHLO everyone,

                Here in The Exchange Café I will be posting on the new developments from the world of Exchange and I can’t think of anything newer than the Preview release of Exchange 2013. In this series I will cover the configuration of the Exchange 2013 preview. This will be broken into 2 sections. The first two posts will be on “Configuration of the Client Access Server in the Exchange 2013 Preview”, and the second two posts will deal with “Configuration of the Mailbox Servers in the Exchange 2013 Preview”

You can access the official documentation and download the Preview here. My good friend “The Exchange Guy” has recently posted on how to install the Client Access Server role for the Exchange 2013 Preview. We will now configure the CAS role for the following topics:

1.        The Exchange Administration Center

2.       Send and Receive connectors

3.       Accepted domains and default email address policies

4.       Configure SSL certs

5.       Configure external URL’s

6.       Configuration of Outlook Anywhere

In this post we will take a look at the new Exchange Administration Center, cover the creation of a Send Connector, and finish by showing how to configure the default accepted domain, and email address policies.

A quick look at the new Exchange Administration Center

From an administration point of view one of the biggest changes in Exchange 2013 Preview is that the Exchange Management Console is gone. The Exchange Administration Center is the evolution of the Exchange Control Panel and it provides a single unified management console for management of on-premise, online, or hybrid deployments. You can access it via a web browser and going to the ECP virtual directory. You can find the ECP virtual directory by running the following command in the Exchange Management Shell:

Get-ECPVirtualDirectory | Format-List InternalURL,ExternalURL

After you login you should see a page similar to the below.

As you can see in the above image via the EAC we have eleven management categories on the left hand side, and when you click on each one you will see the sub categories for each listed at the top of the main page.

Exchange Administration Center note

You can configure the EAC to not allow users internet access form outside the corporate environment. To do this you would run the following Exchange Management Shell command.

Set-ECPVirtualDirectory -Identity “CAS_Server_Name\ecp (default web site) –AdminEnabled $False”

If you want the changes to take effect immediately you will need to restart IIS. To verify this access your Exteranl URL for the ECP and you will get a 404 website not found error.

Create a Send Connector

As with previous versions of Exchange to successfully send email to the internet we first have to configure a send connector. These are the steps that need to be followed to successfully set up the Send Connector.

1.       Go to Mail Flow > Send Connectors. On the Send Connectors page, click the”+” symbol.

2.       In the new send connector wizard, specify a name for the Send connector and then select Internet. Click next.

3.       Verify that MX record associated with recipient domain is selected. Click next.

4.       Under “Address space”, click +. In the add domain window, make sure SMTP is selected in the Type field. In the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) field, enter *. Click save.

5. Make sure “Scoped send connector” isn't selected and then click next.

6. Under Source server, click +. In the Select a server window, select a Mailbox server that will be used to send mail to the Internet via the Client Access server. After you've selected the server, click “add” and then click ok.

7. Click finish

You can now send email outside of your internal Exchange organization!

Receive Connectors

By default an inbound Receive connector is created when the Exchange 2013 Preview is installed. This Receive connector accepts anonymous SMTP connections from external servers, so you do not need to do any additional configuration if this is the functionality you desire. If you want to restrict inbound connections from external servers, modify the Default Frontend <Client Access Server> Receive Connector on the Client Access server.

Add Additional Accepted Domains

When you deploy the Exchange 2013 Preview Exchange uses the domain name of the Active Directory domain where Setup /PrepareAD was run. If additional domains are needed for recipients to send and receive from you must add the domain as an accepted domain. A public DNS MX record is required for each SMTP domain from which you accept email from the internet. To add an accepted domain:

1.       Open the EAC as discussed above.

2.       As you can see in my example below, I have the default jwc2v.com that was created when I installed Exchange. To add another domain go to “Mail Flow” -> “Accepted Domains”, and click on the “+” symbol.

3.       In the ”new accepted domain” wizard enter the name for the accepted domain and in the “Accepted domain” field, specify the SMTP recipient domain you wish to add.

4.       Select “Authoritative domain” and click “Save”

5.       You can see the new Accepted domain above.

Configure Email Address Policies

The last topic for this post is the configuration of Email Address Policies. If you want the accepted domain that we configured to be added to every recipient in the organization you will need to modify the default email address policy.

1.       In the EAC go to “Mail Flow”->”Email Address Policies” and select the “Default Policy” and click the edit icon.

2.       Under “Email address format” select the SMTP address you want to change and then the edit icon.

3.       On the “email address format” page, edit the “Email address parameters” field to specify the SMTP recipient domain you want to apply to all recipients in the Exchange organization. Click “Save”.

4.       Click “Save”

5.       In the “Default Policy” details pane, click “Apply”.

6. If you go to the "Recipients" page you can see these changes.

     That is a wrap for this session of The Exchange Café. In summary we took a peek at the new Exchange Administration Center and how to login to it. We reviewed creating a Send connector and we finished with adding an additional accepted domain and modifying the default email address policies. I invite you stay tuned for the next installment of “Configuration of the Client Access Server in the Exchange 2013 Preview Part 2”. If you have any questions about this topic please feel free to ask.

Jay W. Cotton