How to set up your AWS MailSite Server

Welcome To Your New Email Server.

All services offered by the MailSite Email Server are fully installed and ready to go. But you will need to make a few configurations changes detailed below to personalise your system. The guides below will get you up and running as soon as possible. You can find out more about the MailSite features or get help on our website.

1.       Setup your Domain Name

2.       Create your Mailboxes

3.       Setup your Firewall

4.       Setup DNS

5.       Install your License Key

1. Setup Your Domain Name

1.       Launch the MailSite Console from the start Menu

2.       Expand the 'LOCALHOST' server node and the 'Domains' folder.

3.       Right click on the 'changeme' default domain and choose rename.

4.       Enter the domain name the server will be handling email for, and press enter to save your changes.

5.       If you want to host more than one domain, you can add these by right clicking the 'Domains' folder node and selecting 'New Domain'.

2. Create Your Mailboxes

1.       Expand the 'Domains' node and click the 'Mailboxes' folder.

2.       Right click on the Right hand side of the console and hover to allow the 'Create New' sub menu to expand.

3.       Select 'Registry Mailbox'.

4.       Enter the mailbox name. For example to create a mailbox for bob@domain.com enter "bob" and click 'OK'.

6.       Click 'Yes' to display all the mailboxes on the system.

7.       Double click your new mailbox and assign a password, then Click 'OK'. We recommend you also change the password for the postmaster mailbox at this point.

8.       Repeat the above procedure for all the mailboxes you wish to host. If you want to automate the process you can create a script to utilise our MSBOX command line tool.

You can now log in to your new mailbox using the ExpressPro web client at http://localhost/expresspro

3. Setup your Firewall

If you launched your mail server using the default Security Group setup, your firewall will already allow access to the main services offered by MailSite. If you chose to create a custom security group, you will need to add firewall rules to allow access to the main protocol services as follows. The same guide can be used to restrict access to services to specific IP ranges.

1.       In the Amazon Web Services EC2 Console select 'Security Groups' from the left hand side.

2.       Click the Group you the MailSite server is a member of in the top half of the console.

3.       Select the 'Inbound' tab in the bottom pane to show the security rules.

4.       We recommend you have a security rules to allow access for SMTP, IMAP, POP, and HTTP services as well as a restricted RDP rule for server administration.

5.       To create a SMTP rule select SMTP from the 'Create a new Rule' drop down box. Leave the source as 0.0.0.0/0 which allows access from all addresses. Click the 'Add Rule' and 'Apply Rule Changes' button to complete the configuration

6.       Repeat the above for IMAP, POP, HTTP and RDP from the drop down box. We recommend you restrict RDP access to a static IP, or range of IP addresses you control for security reasons.

4. Setup DNS

You need to configure DNS to ensure your system can send and receive email for your domain.

Incoming DNS

The first requirement is to obtain a static IP for your MailSite email server instance as follows:

1.       Select 'Elastic IPs' from the left hand side of the AWS EC2 console and press the 'Allocate New Address' button (IP Addresses are free as long as you are using them).

2.       Select EC2 from the allocation options, and press the 'Yes, Allocate' button.

3.       Right click on your new IP Address and choose 'Associate Address'.

4.       Select your MailSite Email Server from the 'Instance' drop down and press the 'Associate' button to complete the process.

5.       You will now need to re-connect any open remote desktop sessions you had with your email server by connecting to the new IP address.

Once you have a static IP address, you are ready to create your DNS entries. How you create your DNS entries depends on which Domain Name provider you use.

You will need to create a new 'A record' mapping a host, typically mail.yourdomain.com, to the IP address you allocated earlier. You will then need to set a MX (Mail eXchange) entry to point to the new hostname.

The following example is for GoDaddy but will be similar for many providers.

1.       Log into your account and launch the 'Domain Manager'

2.       Click on the domain you wish to configure.

3.       Select the 'DNS Zone File' tab and click the Edit button

4.       Hover over and click the cross icon to remove any existing mail.yourdomain.com CNAME entries

5.       Click the 'Add new record' button.

6.       Choose 'A Record' and complete the form adding a 'mail' host pointing to the IP for your server.

7.       Scroll down to the MX records and edit the 0 priority entry to point to mail.yourdomain.com

8.       Delete any additional MX entries and click the 'Save Zone File' button to complete the configuration.

Outgoing (Reverse) DNS

Many email providers require that any server which sends email to them has a valid reverse DNS entry. This maps the IP address to the reported host name. To set this up on Amazon Web Services you will need to complete the Email Sending Limits and Reverse DNS form here: https://portal.aws.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/contactus/ec2-email-limit-rdns-request Be sure to request a mapping of your IP to your mail.yourdomain.com hostname.

Once the reverse DNS is in place configure your host file on the server to ensure SMTPDA uses this value:

1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to this folder 'C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc'
2. Open the file called 'HOSTS'
3. At the bottom of the file add entry like XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX mail.domain.com where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP bound to the domain and mail.domain.com is the value you want SMTPDA to report.
4. Create additional entries in the HOSTS file for each internal IP address on the server.
5. Save the file and restart the SMTPDA and SMTPRA services.

5. Install Your License Key

The MailSite email instance will run for 30 days from launch in trial mode. After the 30 days are up you will need to purchase and install a license key.

1.       To purchase your license key go to http://www.mailsite.com and click on 'Buy Now'

2.       Once you have received your license key, open the MailSite console and open the 'License Key' dialog from the right hand side with the 'Server' folder selected

3.       Enter your license key and click the 'Validate' button to install it.