Question : OWA with two Exchange 2003 servers

Hello,

I have two Exchange 2003 SP2 servers.  Both are back end servers, however, only one of the servers receives email externally.  The Exchange server that receives email externally routes mail to the other Exchange server via routing connector.   I have successfully deployed ISA Server 2006 as a gateway for OWA to the server that receives email externally.  However, I am unable to get OWA to work externally for the second Exchange server that does not receive email externally.

I have verified OWA is enabled and working on the second Exchange server by trying the OWA directory internally (%servername%/exchange).  However when I try to login to OWA externally (to the second Exchange server), the URL changes from my OWA site to my server name.  For example... my OWA name is "mail.domain.com."  When I log into a mailbox on the first server, the URL is something like "mail.domain.com/Exchange".  When I try logging in using a mailbox on the second Exchange server, the URL changes to "servername.domain.com/Exchange"... which obviously isn't going to work outside our network.  

I am fairly confident I can get the second Exchange server published if I were to create another url (I.E. mail2.domain.com) and create a new rule on ISA to publish all requests from that URL to the second Exchange server.  But I would like to have everyone in our org use the same URL if possible.  

Anyone have any ideas?
David

Answer : OWA with two Exchange 2003 servers

This is by design.  If you want the first Exchange server to proxy the OWA requests, it must be setup as a Front-End server.  Otherwise, it will redirect users to the correct server which as you realized, would require you to setup another external name, external IP and a NAT.