[Macpartners] Apple Mail and Exchange

[Andrew Munchbach]

Hi Jenn--

The behavior you're seeing is in-fact due to the DNS switch that occurred
last weekend.  We are now running two Exchange environments:
oa.exchange.mit.edu ­ Exchange 2010; and legacy.exchange.mit.edu ­
Exchange 2007.  This setup allows IS&T to slowly migrate users from the
2007 servers to the 2010 servers.

On to your questionŠ

If you are running Snow Leopard (10.6) it may be advisable to change the
address back to oa.exchange.mit.edu.  If you are on Lion (10.7) there is
no need to make any adjustments.  Here is the reasoning: each time you
launch Mail.app in Lion it checks with our Exchange environment to verify
the correct Exchange server address for your username.  This means when
your mailbox is migrated to Exchange 2010 Mail.app will do all the work
for you.  Snow Leopard's iteration of Mail.app does not, unfortunately, do
this each time it is started.  Mail.app in 10.6 only verifies your
Exchange server address at account creation.  IS&T has developed a
creative solution to assist Snow Leopard users.  If you are using Snow
Leopard and Mail.app, oa.exchange.mit.edu will correctly re-direct you to
legacy.exchange.mit.edu on the fly.  When you are migrated to Exchange
2010, the correct address will be oa.exchange.mit.edu and no re-direction
will be necessary.

So, your options are:

1. You're on Lion (10.7) there is nothing you have to do.
2. You're on Snow Leopard (10.6) you change the address back.
3. You're on Snow Leopard and leave the address as legacy.exchange.mit.edu
but know that when you're migrated to Exchange 2010 you have to change the
address to oa.exchange.mit.edu.

Sorry for being so verbose.  I thought the Macpartners community might
benefit from understanding why this behavior is occurring and why it may
be impactful to them.

Best--
Andrew
- - -
Andrew Munchbach
Macintosh Platform Coordinator
IS&T | Systems Engineering | SWRT
swrt at mit.edu


From:  Jennifer A Morris <j_morris at MIT.EDU>
Reply-To:  Jennifer A Morris <j_morris at mit.edu>
Date:  Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:14:25 -0400
To:  Macintosh IT Partners <macpartners at MIT.EDU>
Subject:  [Macpartners] Apple Mail and Exchange


I noticed that while Mail automatically found an Exchange server after I
entered my email address, but the address it's using is
"legacy.exchange.mit.edu <http://legacy.exchange.mit.edu>" and not
"oa.exchange.mit.edu <http://oa.exchange.mit.edu>".