Tutorials

In this tutorial, we will install Exchange Server 2013 instead of using Office 365. An on-premise Exchange Server gives you the same functionality and flexibility as you previously had with your SBS 2003, 2008 or 2011. The Exchange Server will be installed on a separate member server in your domain because it cannot be installed on Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, it is not supported.

The difference between the good old SBS and the new situation is that you need two servers and in most cases, those will be virtualized on one Hyper-V Host. If you want to read more on this subject go here How to install and configure Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 . That tutorials explain how to install the free Hyper-V 2012 R2 Server.

Understanding network layout and IP schema’s

Just to better understand how our network looks like I have made a little network drawing. Our network has a switch and a router. The router is also used as a DHCP server and offers also DNS functionality. The router forwards traffic on port 80 and 443 to the IP address of the Windows Server Essentials 2012R2 and on port 25 traffic is forwarded to the IP address of the Exchange Server 2013. I write ‘forwarded’ but depending on the device it could also mean ‘natted’ or in the case of a proper Firewall, you would publish services to the Internet. How you configure your router/firewall is up to you.

This is a typical ‘one public IP address’ setup found in most small businesses. Normally you would need two public IP addresses to accomplish what we do but with the Application Request Routing app we are able to route traffic for ‘mail. server-essentials.net’ to the Exchange Server 2013. Traffic for ‘remote.server-essentials.net’ will still be served by the RWA applications on the Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2

An overview of the ports to be opened