Josh_41258
Dec 02, 2008Nimbostratus
Exchange 2003 FE & LTM
Our current Exchange 2003 environment has a front end server that does SMTP routing (our external SMTP gateways relay mail to here, and then from the FE they go to the appropriate back-end server). This server also does OWA for outside clients.
We would like to utilize a pair of LTM's for both SMTP routing and OWA. One idea was to -- create two virtual servers, one used for SMTP routing which services TCP/25, and one for OWA which services TCP/443. Our external SMTP gateways would point at the SMTP Virtual IP on the LTM's to relay mail, and external clients from the Internet would hit the OWA Virtual IP.
Has anyone utilized LTM's in this fashion -- to load balance front end SMTP servers for Exchange? I'm looking for any suggestions, guidelines, etc. One option was not to use the F5's for the SMTP services -- but to use MS NLB. I'd rather stick with F5 on this front.
Any tips/suggestions/etc? I have also heard from some that we should use ISA behind the F5's to publish
OWA, but I am not sure this is really necessary and I'm not sure what we would gain from this.
Any tips/suggestions would be MUCH appreciated.
Thanks,
Josh