Sharepoint deployment with Exchange 2007

Question

I am planning to deploy a single-server Exchange 2007 configuration and I'd like to also start using Sharepoint for collaboration - what would the recommended deployment scenario be to accomplish this [Sharepoint will also run on its own server] to allow use of OWA + Sharepoint sites both as public resources as well as common space for document sharing etc., from inside and outside the LAN?

I am just trying to visualize but what I would like to do is:

1) Run an internal Exchange 2007 server

2) Run an internal Sharepoint 2007 server

3) Have a server which is NAT'd to the outside (for OWA and Sharepoint access) running the Exchange 2007 CAS role <- but I'm not too sure if this is needed, however I basically want to expose my OWA and Sharepoint services using a single [external] IP.

I hope I am making myself clear - I'd just like some guidance regarding the recommended configuration for what I explained above.

Answer 1

I'm not clear on a couple things. Specifically what you mean when you say you want to allow the use of SharePoint sites both as public resources as well as a common space for document sharing.

I take this to mean 1 of 2 scenarios (a) you want your internal users to be able to access SharePoint document libraries once they have logged in successfully to OWA. or

(b) You want to make the sites available to the public in some type of extranet scenario.

Option B opens up a whole lot of unanswered questions re: authentication as well as licensing. Hoping this is not what you want to do.

Option A - a little simpler - I can only talk generally as my experience is SP only - and this really is (as I understand it) more of an Exchange configuration issue. I believe you have to involve an ISA server for the OWA deployment. Connection to SP is pretty straightforward and well documented in TechNet.

What you get is access to the document libraries on SP sites that they user has access to. It's not the full SP site. But 90% of the time, that is sufficient.

My other piece of information is that, in order to do this - your end users must be accessing OWA via IE. Any other browser will pull up OWA "lite" which doesn't support the connection from OWA to SP.

If I'm way off, please post more details, and we can try again.