An argument AGAINST hosting your own email domain.

From: SuperGumby [SBS MVP] (not_at_your.nellie)
Date: 12/06/04 

Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 22:01:23 +1100

but you're allowed to argue the 'for'.

My thoughts on this go back a few months when I was asking a client's web
and zone host to give us an MX record. The support guy I was talking to
thought I was crazy. 'Mick, we'll host unlimited (users and size) mailboxes
for them, optionally SPAM check them, AV them, and give them a web interface
which includes out of office and forwarding capabilities, AT NO (additional)
COST'.

It's been chewing away at me since. Just why the hey should I open my system
to 'auth attacks', NDR attacks, attacks which have yet to be invented, or
even attacks which don't exist, when these guys will throw it in with a
basic hosting facility?

In the past we didn't like the 'POP Connector', there was a problem where it
lost mail for the 16th user (7th and 15th users maybe? some number user). We
still don't like the POP Connector because it doesn't handle mail in a
global mailbox with multiple 'TO:' fields and also doesn't handle 'BCC:'
well. BIG DEAL, get rid of your global mailboxes and set up individual
mailboxes at your hosting company. The hosting company will properly 'fan
out' the multiple 'TO:' and 'BCC:' mail and as the SBS2003 dev team fixed
the '7th or 15th user problem' the POP Connector's ability to collect mail
from an individual mailbox and assign it to an Exchange mailbox works, we
seem to have an ideal situation.

We commonly tell people 'get your WWW hosted', mainly because this means we
reduce our attack surface by not requiring an open port 80.
If we also tell them 'let your WWW host also host your email domain' we can
close port 25, reducing our attack surface further.

We can still pull the mail into Exchange, AV and SPAM check it before it
gets to the user, give them our own web interface via OWA, bells whistles,
full kit and kaboodle.

imterested in your thoughts.
TIA
mm

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