Exchange 2013 Edge server adds an extra layer of security to your network. It is handling all inbound and outbound mail flow and is placed, usually, in a DMZ – in its own workgroup. Until it has been introduced with Exchange 2013 SP1, the choices were limited to:

– Using a legacy Exchange 2007/2010 Edge server
– Using a third party product, device, or open source mail server
– Using the filtering services of an external provider – ex. Microsoft FOPE

One of the missing pieces in Exchange 2013 has been the connection filtering transport agent. Using IP Block List providers, like SpamHaus, can reduce significantly the amount of spam targeting your organization and without the connection filtering agent, this functionality was not available in the initial Exchange server 2013 release.

In this step-by-step screencast, we demonstrate how to install and configure Exchange 2013 Edge server in a perimeter network (DMZ). In addition, you will see how to pretest and configure two of the most popular real-time block list providers (RBL) – SpamHaus and Barracuda.

For your convenience, we have published the text file with the commands that we are using in the Screencast here .

Step 1 We start with preparing the new machine in the perimeter network (DMZ) and installing Exchange 2013 Edge Server prerequisites.

Step 2 In this step, we perform the actual Exchange 2013 Edge Server installation, and we validate the installation.

Step 3 Next, we configure and test the name resolution, and the ports that need to be open between the internal Mailbox server and the Edge server in the DMZ. Then, we generate and complete the Edge server subscription request.

Step 4 In the last step, we configure SpamHaus and Barracuda as IP Block List providers. As you will see, it is crucial to choose suitable DNS servers for the Exchange 2013 Edge server and test their responses, as some public DNS servers (ex. Google’s Public DNS servers) do not forward correctly the RBL responses.