Mail & Web Hosting

[shahzad_aijaz]

I want to know that what things would I be needing if I want to host my company website and mail on our own server in office.

Regards
Shahzad Aijaz

[meneer]

A few questions:

Are you behind a firewall?
Do you own your public ip address and can you manage your own dns entries?
What server do you plan to run? Windows, or a dedicated linux or unix solution?
How many users and mailboxes do you plan to host?
Do you need anti virus/anti spam?
Do you run an Outlook-like mailclient or do you plan to offer webmail?
Do you need web acces control (content scanning)?
Do you object open source software?

Yep, so many questions :)

If from scratch: get sme server (http://www.contribs.org), an all in one linnux based internet gateway with web and mailserver (pop3), http caching proxy, content scanning option, a/v and a/s option, and all free... I love it *puppy* )

[shahzad_aijaz]

Now let me tell you somethings about my company.
We are a mid-level trading company. We have a domain name registered but we are planning to host mails and website on our own.

Hardware: Yes (HP Proliant ML370 G3)
Domain Name: Yes
Static IP: Yes
Operating System: Windows 2003 Server
Mail Server: Exchange Server 2000
Web Server: IIS 5
Mail Client: Microsoft Outlook 2003
Approx # of Mailboxes: 10
Antivirus: Under Consideration (NOD 32 / Kaspersky Pro)
Firewall: Under Consideration (NetScreen / ZoneAlarm Pro / OutPost Pro)
Internet Connection: DSL 64Kbps

I dont know about "manage your own dns entries". What is this??

Best Regards
Shahzad Aijaz

[meneer]

First thing to do:
install a firewall, not just a personal firewall. This firewall might as well be a dhcp server for your clients. The Exchange server and webserver better have a fixed ip address (in you local network range).

You should instruct your domain registrar to point the the ip address of your domain name to your fixed public ip address. Same for the mx record (it it the mail director in the dns system).

On your firewall you'll have to forward all incoming mailtraffic to your mailserver. I don't know about smtp - exchange interaction, I suppose someone else will help you there.

A webserver will not be a problem once the e-mail is working. It also requires port forwarding to your webserver (IIS).