Yes, a RP can handle ActiveSync traffic. And WAP is not difficult to configure.

I’ll be happy to be a consultant for you and tell you that direct-NAT-to-CAS is 
fine. And I bet my credentials are better than his. ☺

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Tommy Fudge
Sent: Friday, May 9, 2014 12:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Exchange] CAS exposure - Exchange 2013 SP1

“A reverse proxy is not wanted…”
This is due to the supposed complexity.  I know 2012 R2 has WAP included, and I 
have suggested that.  I don't think it would be complex to setup at all.  On a 
side note, can a reverse proxy handle ActiveSync traffic?

“….and NAT through the firewall to the CAS array is deemed too dangerous. “
I agree - this is the easiest solution, and reasonably secure.  Sure they were 
issues in the past, but things have come a long way.  This was the initial 
idea, until a consultant balked at it.

“…for the single CAS in the DMZ.”
I should have clarified a bit on this, it would be firewalled off from the 
world, not a true DMZ Only 443 would be accessible.  This is really no 
differnet from the NAT solution, except there is a firewall between it and 
AD/the rest of Exchange.  I think this gives a feeling of security.  Secondary 
to this, they do not view mobile devices as critical and only a handful of 
users would use it and OWA remotely - so if the single server dies we will deal 
with the downtime.

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:17 AM, Kennedy, Jim 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
“A reverse proxy is not wanted…”

I have to ask why because in my mind that is the best thing to do in this 
situation. If they won’t allow access to 443 from the outside to a specific 
location why have an internet connection?

“….and NAT through the firewall to the CAS array is deemed too dangerous. “

And again why, because that would be the second best solution imho. This sounds 
like predisposed beliefs that exposing Exchange OWA to the world is dangerous. 
Back in 5.5 days I would have been on that page but I don’t think that is the 
case now.

“…for the single CAS in the DMZ.”

And this sounds like the worst idea of them all. You will have lots of ports 
open from the CAS to the internal to make that CAS work. So now that box gets 
popped out there and the bad guy now has the whole world of all the AD ports at 
their disposal to your internal network.

Be interesting to see what my learned colleges here on the list think. But the 
above is what I am going with.

From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] 
On Behalf Of Tommy Fudge
Sent: Friday, May 9, 2014 11:08 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [Exchange] CAS exposure - Exchange 2013 SP1

Morning,

My work is concerned about exposing our CAS array to the public internet.  
Initial thoughts are to place a single CAS in the DMZ with ports open to our 
internal network.  I have obvious concerns with this approach, but it is 
gaining traction, so I need to know if this will even work.  On our internal 
network are two AD sites, each site contains 2 CAS and 2 MBX (single DAG) and 
each has independent internet connectivity.  Varying thoughts are floating 
around such as using mail.domain.com<http://mail.domain.com> for the internal 
CAS array, and mobile.domain.com<http://mobile.domain.com> for the single CAS 
in the DMZ.  Autodiscover will point to "mail" which should allow internal 
clients to auto configure.  There is no desire for external clients to auto 
configure (or even laptops to function out of the office using Outlook 
Anywhere).  Mobile devices would be statically configured to use the "mobile" 
namespace by IT, and external clients would connect to OWA via "mobile" as well.

A reverse proxy is not wanted, and NAT through the firewall to the CAS array is 
deemed too dangerous.  I know the single CAS is a hole in the firewall anyway 
and also unsupported by MS, but would this scenario even work?  Is there any 
impact to Outlook clients on the internal network seeing the CAS in the DMZ?  
Would I need to make the internal CAS array non internet-facing and the single 
DMZ based CAS internet-facing?  Can a single AD site support both 
internet-facing and non facing CAS?

Definitely open to suggestions here.  This is not production yet - no 
coexistence as we use an old Linux mail server right now.

Thanks,

Tommy

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