RPC/HTTPs and Internet connection

[SlowFox]

I face the challenge that we would like to have our notebook users / OWA users acces their archives, but offline vaults are not permitted.

We do use a reverse proxy connected to the internet.

As we understand, every time an archived file is accessed a new session is started over port 80 (plain http). Within our security standard it is not permitted to access directly the network where the EV server (EV2007) is located.

Using Exchange Server 2007 the clients (outlook 2003 and 2007) are connecting via RPC/HTTPS through the proxy to the CAS servers.

Can we (and how to do it) use the same certificates and session to connect to the EV?

Or is there another "easy" way to secure the connection?

Can we use the webalias like https://archive.xxx.xxx/........ and let it be handled by the proxy and change the IIS settings to 443, but what effect will this have if the notebook users are in the house connected directly to the network?

getting a little confused....

[Brian_Day]

Good news. As I understand things EV works the same way your reverse proxy to CAS connections work. We have the same security policy as you and our security folks didn't even blink when we gave them the EV setup docs for RPCoHTTPS.

Your reverse proxy (Sounds like you probably have ISA) will make the connection for you. Yes, the users will get prompted once for an HTTP session initiation with user/pass, but then it stays open until you close Outlook and all instances of iexplore.exe.

If I'm wrong, someone please correct me. Theres no way our sec folks would have allowed a connection to the internal network as well, only to DMZ.

[MichelZ]

Hi

I got the same opinion as Brian.
Have a look at Install & Configure Guide, there is a description of the Setup using ISA.
(For Example: Configuring ISA Server 2004 for Exchange Server 2003 RPC over HTTP access to Enterprise Vault, on Page 302, EV 2007)

Cheers
Michel