Configure URL Redirection in Exchange 2013

After installing and configuring the Exchange 2013 server, managing URLs is another important task. But first, you must define various external and internal URLs that will be used to access virtual directories of Exchange Server. IIS manager is used to configure URL redirection in Exchange 2013.

Our Scenario: Redirect HTTP to HTTPS and Redirect domain mail.mustbegeek.com to OWA

As I’ve talked in my earlier article, we want the domain mail.mustbegeek.com to be used by clients to access the Exchange web mail. Similarly, https://mail.mustbegeek.com/ecp will be used by admins to access the EAC console from outside. So we need to redirect the URL, mail.mustbegeek.com to https://mail.mustbegeek.com/owa.

Step 1: Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

To redirect HTTP request to HTTPS follow these steps. Open IIS manager in Exchange server. Click Default Web Site on the left pane and double-click SSL Settings in features pane.

Now uncheck the Require SSL option and click Apply in the actions pane.

Repeat same steps for Exchange Back End website. Remove check mark from Require SSL option from SSL settings. Click Apply to save the settings.

Step 2: Redirect Default Web Site to OWA

Follow these steps to redirect http://mail.mustbegeek.com to https://mail.mustbegeek.com/owa. We have already configure HTTP to HTTPS redirection. Now we need to configure redirection for requests that comes into Default Web Site to OWA virtual directory. In the IIS manager, click Default Web Site on the left pane. Double-click HTTP Redirect feature in features pane.

Now check the option, Redirect requests to this destination. Type full path of the URL, i.e. https://mail.mustbegeek.com/owa. In the Redirect Behavior option, check the option – Only redirect requests to content in this directory (not subdirectories). Under status code, choose Found (302). Click Apply to save the settings.

Repeat the same steps for Exchange Back End website as well. Select Exchange Back End website. Double-click HTTP Redirect option in the features pane. Then configure the following settings as shown below.

Now remove the HTTP redirect option from sub folders of both websites. We really don’t want to redirect sub folders to /owa directory. We only want the default web URL mail.mustbegeek.com to be redirected to https://mail.mustbegeek.com/owa. So uncheck the HTTP Redirect option from all the sub directories of both websites i.e. Default Web Site and Exchange Back End.

Step 3: Configure ECP Sub Folder

To access the EAC from outside, ecp sub directory of the Default Web Site and Exchange Back End web site will be used. So let’s configure ecp sub directory. We should only allow SSL connection to this virtual directory so SSL option must be configured first. This means that you must type https://domain.com/ecp in the browser to login to EAC console. Expand default web site and select ecp virtual directory. Double click SSL Settings from the features pane. Check Require SSL option. Click Apply to save the settings. So now if you try to access http://mail.mustbegeek.com/ecp then you might get access denied error. You must use https://mail.mustbegeek.com/ecp URL to successfully log into EAC console.

Repeat the same steps for Exchange Back End web site.

Now make sure that you don’t have any Redirection option enabled on ecp virtual directory for both web sites. As this step is already done in step 2 of this post.

Now restart the IIS server by typing iisreset /noforce in the command prompt. You can now access the OWA by typing the URL, mail.mustbegeek.com in the browser which will redirect you to https://mail.mustbegeek.com/owa. Similarly, you can access EAC by typing URL, https://mail.mustbegeek.com/ecp in the browser.