Topic: Small Business server

[Rich]

Has anyone here had experience with MS Small Business Server. I am having trouble configuring it to look past itself for its own domain name.

For instance, a user on a client desktop cannot use internet explorer to look up his own web site, which is hosted externally.

Where in the many areas that you can change settings should i tell it to look at an external ip address or the e-smith proxy?

Does anyone have any good resources (besides mircosoft.com), or book recommendations for someone who may have to go to the dark side for a while.

(never used any MS Server products before so please be gentle on my already befuddled brain)

[%sig%]

[lgl]

hi,

i use sme as gateway, file server, and web server with a Small B. Server.

On the SBS, i have stop the dns service, the dhcp service.

On Workstation :
a) In Internet Explorer, i set the Internet Proxy adresse of my SME (port 3128) and all is good.

b) In network parameters, i set the adresse of sme  in gateway parameters.

[Schotty]

Hello!

For one you are using the wrong forum for asking questions about other products. However I shall give you an answer.

Your clients get there Ip from the DHCP Server, which in your case will be most probably the SBS. If you open the DHCP Manager in SBS, then here you are able to set options for the dhcp clients. Among these options is default gateway, and dns server.

If you set these to the ip address of your SME server - which I presume is your proxy server, then you will find that when the clients have renewed there ip address then I can use the internet.


Yours

Schotty

[Nick Critten]

While the above responses are correct, you may run into problems on your clients if you do not point them at the SBS for DNS, i.e.

Your clients probably won't be able to log onto the exchange server (spit) if you want to use it.

Your clients will be SSSSSSSLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW to log onto the window domain.

Group Policy (if you use it) will not work.


The best way to fix this is as follows:

1) Go into the DHCP manager on teh SBS and set the SBS to be the DNS server again.
2) Go into the DNS manager on the SBS and check to make sure it doesn't think its a root server (Look for an entry called "." in the forward lookup zones) - If its there, delete it, close DNS manager and restart the DNS server Service then go back into the DNS manager.
3) R-Click properties on the Server and go to forwarders.
4) Enter the Internal IP of your SME box as a forwarder
5) Under Forward Lookup zones go into domain folder you are concerned with eg "company.co.uk"
Create a new Host record (A) call it WWW and give the IP address of the server on which the companies website is hosted.


This will cause the SBS to resolve LOCAL queries itself, if it doesn't recognise a domain it will forward th request to the SME box for resolution. If you try to go to www.company.co.uk it has a static record telling it where to go.

If you get any problems, let me know.


Nick

Network Consultant
Networking Systems Ltd.

[Rich]

Thanks guys,

Nick especially,

I know it's not exactly the right place to ask but i knew that someone here would have the correct answer. (and i am using e-smith as a proxy server so technically....)

[Schotty]

Hello!
I dont quite agree with this. The clients would not be slow at all! If the clients would be slow then this would indeed not have anything at all to do with dns!!!

Since when would dns actually speed up an intern network - ie. one location with only one domain???

The way you describe would most probably be better if more locations were involved. It involves though using two dns servers, which in my way of thinking is just a case of more work and more points of failures.

I have a setup of  SBS 4.5; Ip-cop and SME server.
IP-Cop handles the proxy/firewall (with DNS)
SME Server handles the Mail and a couple of admin shares,
and the SBS Server has shares, SQL, WINS server and makes the domain.
With this setup there is absolutly no speed cutbacks.

If I am wrong somewhere then I would love to hear from you!!

Schotty

P.s Exchange is useable too, but its not doing much now. Everything has been migrated to SME Server.

[Nick Critten]

Ahhh. Sorry Schotty, I didn't clarify

I was referring to either A win2000 or 2003 SBS.

If you're running an NT4 based SBS then yes you don't need DNS on the server, but if you run a 2k or 2k3 based server, and 2k or xp clients they NEED DNS on the Server or else you will experience the problems I outlined above.

Also the Clients won't be Slow to run, Just Slow to *log on* or won't log on at all in some cases.



Nick

[Schotty]

Ok Mate thanks!

[PC]

This all assumes that the SME was set up as the PDC right?

[Nick Critten]

No the SBS would be the PDC.

.....

That said, since 2Kserver there's no such thing as PDC's and BDC's, Just Domain Controlers and Member servers.

Trust Microsoft to keep changing things whenever they like it!

Nick

[Samer Pharaon]

Nick Critten wrote:

> I was referring to either A win2000 or 2003 SBS.
>
> If you're running an NT4 based SBS then yes you don't need
> DNS on the server, but if you run a 2k or 2k3 based server, and
> 2k or xp clients they NEED DNS on the Server or else you will
> experience the problems I outlined above.
>
> Also the Clients won't be Slow to run, Just Slow to *log on*
> or won't log on at all in some cases.

I can confirm that the above is true from my experience. XP clients get very slow in the described situation. I was able to solve this problem by specifying the Win2K machine as the DNs primary server on the XP client, and log on with that configuration only once or twice, and then replace it with the IP address of the SME server as the primary dns.

Doing this on many XP clients, I found that the log on speed will be back to normal and at the same time, I can still use SME server as the primary dns for the XP clients.


Best regards,
Samer Pharaon

[%sig%]

[ryan]

Nicks solution is will work, I went through this with AD2000 and all 2k clients.  Nice write up Nick.

Ryan

[Nick Critten]

No Worries
Glad to be of service.

Now all I have to do is find someone who knows how to get Outlook Web Access to work........ Hmmm.

Nick

[Boris]

> Now all I have to do is find someone who knows how to get Outlook Web Access to work
>
Try to use proxypass contrib and redirect web URL to internal web server where Web Outlook (or is it LookOut? ) is running.

[%sig%]

[Nick Critten]

Thanks Boris, but my problem is with the Micro$haft product itself.

Typical Bill Gates product, It doesn't work, and doesn't tell me why either.

Buuut Its a M$ only problem so I wont Contaminate this BB with it any further )

Nick