Exchange 2003 help required

eidolon · 9 Apr 2006 at 10:44

Our domain at work was a single Windows 2003 server (fileserver.domain.local) Then I added an Exchange 2003 server as a member server and simply added it to the domain (exchange.domain.local). I then ran the SMTP wizard which appears to have amended the recipients policy by adding mydomain.org.uk as a suffix so that when I add a new user it automatically creates 3 email addresses for them ([email protected] - [email protected] & an X400 one).

Everything seemed to be working fine, users were able to send and recieve internal and external emails however I noticed that emails sent to AOL were getting delayed and then were unable to be delivered so I ran my mailserver IP through dnsstuff and it appeared that I didn't have a PTR record. I contacted my ISP who set this up for me however they were unable to set the record to point to exchange.domain.local, they had to set it to exchange.domain.org.uk (which obviously isn't the name of my mailserver)

AOL emails still aren't going so I wondered if anyone could advise on what to do next? Can I simply change my server name to mydomain.org.uk or will that break anything?

Sone · 9 Apr 2006 at 11:01

qucik temp fix would be to add another connector with a lower value than the default one with the address space of AOL.com and the smarthost set to your ISP's smpt server.

I think your problem is your server isn't identyfiying itself as exchange.domain.org.uk, i havent set up ane exchange server for ages but on on of the SMTP options you can tell it what it identify itself as.

edit, just logged into our exchange server and its inthe default SMTP virtual server properties, delivery tab, then advanced button

eidolon · 9 Apr 2006 at 11:41

Sone said:
edit, just logged into our exchange server and its inthe default SMTP virtual server properties, delivery tab, then advanced button

Right then, just done that. Anything else need doing or should that be it?

Otacon · 9 Apr 2006 at 12:02

Does your public namespace have an SPF (in the form of a TXT) record? I believe AOL run the SPF checks (seem to recall having this problem myself last year, and adding the record solved it).

http://www.openspf.org/

csmager · 9 Apr 2006 at 12:42

I decided it was too much effort (especially for our Home/Office setup). AOL do seem to be the only problem, but setting the connector to use a Smarthost to send emails instead of attempting delivery itself will solve all the problems.

Mikey · 11 Apr 2006 at 09:34

I had this problem with a client of ours, vitacress.co.uk and found that they didn't have a reverse point for their mail server. I got BT to add a reverse pointer in DNS for vitamail.vitacress.co.uk and it all works fine now.

Yes the other route I would go is adding a smart host etc. The only smart hosts I've ever used are black spider, message labs and nhs.net so they do all the filtering etc too..

I'm planning on moving onto a static IP at home and getting an exchange server up and running there. Prob virtual though