Exchange Newbie - Help Needed! Exchange & DNS Issues
I am having some issues setting up DNS properly for my environment. I have a client that has one server behind a firewall. The single Windows 2003 server is doing some rudimentary file and printer sharing and Ive just installed Exchange Server 2003 (STD.) The problem is that I can send and receive e-mails within the organization and to an Internet mailbox, but cannot receive internet mail. Notes about the environment: This is a single server environment running Active Directory The Windows domain name differs from the internet domain name. (I tried creating a new zone for the internet domain entry w/ reverse look-up but that didnt work.) The website (in development stages) is being hosted by the ISP. Users logged into the domain cannot access the website. This leads me to believe that there's a DNS issue afoot. MX and A records were set up at the internet name hosting site (Go-Daddy) directing mail to the server using the public address and server name (servername.internetdomainname.org). The firewalls rules were modified to allow traffic on ports 25, 80, 110, 143, 389, and 443. The clients (PCs) are using the servers DNS for name resolution. When messages are sent from the Internet, it times-out after 48hrs I believe the issues lie with the way DNS is set up. Im looking for very detailed instructions on how to set up (and test) DNS to work properly. Ive tinkered long enough. Im close, but Im clearly missing something key. Should you require further detail, please dont hesitate to ask. Thanks in advance for your assistance. Marc
September 26th, 2007 3:26am

Marc, Did you define the external domain name in your recipient policy? When you define this external domain, there will be a check box where you tell Exchange that the server is responsible for for mail delivery to this domain. If you don't define the external domain, then Exchange won't accept the inbound email from the internet. If you have already done the above and it's not working, here are some other things to check: From outside the network (from home, for example) telnet to ports 80 and 443 on the ip address of your server. If the connection times-out, then the ports aren't open.Does OWA work? Again from outside, telnet to port 25 on the external IP address of the Exchange server. From this interface, you can manually send mail to an internal client using their valid email address(I use gmail for your email address only as an example): helo gmail.com mail from:marc@gmail.com rcpt to:marc@yourexternalworkdomain.com data Test Message . You should get successful responses from the server for each of these commands. On the rcpt to, if you get an error on the email address, then you should get an smtp error code which you can research and find the cause. Rob
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September 28th, 2007 1:23am

Rob, Thanks for the reply. I believe that I did define the recipient policy. I'll confirm tomorrow. OWA does work (for the Administrator ID). There seems to be a rights issue at fault for other "normal" ids. I will try the other diagnostic (SMTP) commands and see how ther server responds and aprise you of my findings. I still believe that I have some DNS issues i.e., cannot access externally hosted (public) website within the domain. Whether or not they are related remains to be seen. Thanks again, Marc
September 28th, 2007 6:47am

Rob, Perfomed some of the tests. As it turns out, the firewall was blocking some of the SMTP commands. The client has a Cisco router running PIX and I found a article that highly suggests that Mailguard (SMTP filtering) be disabled. As it stands, I can perform the SMTP tests. I've changed so much chasing this, it probably would have worked if I discovered this a long time ago. At the end of the tests, SMTP indicates that the message is placed in the queue. However, the mail is still not being delivered. I get a message indicating that the message has timed out (after 48 hours). I corrected the recipient policy as well. I'm stumped. It would seem as though Exchange and SMTP are not talking. DNS? I still cannot get to my externally hosted website from within the domain. I can still send Internet bound and internally bound mail. Your continued assistance is greatly appreciated. Marc
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October 1st, 2007 3:23pm

Marc, If the customer is using a Pix, they should definitely disable the smtp fixup. no fixup protocol smtp 25
October 1st, 2007 7:24pm

Marc, Sorry about that last post...hit enter too quickly. Did you turn on message tracking? It will help you to find out where the problem might be taking place. After enabling message tracking, send yourself a couple of more emails to generate some logs. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/246856 Also, you can enable a higher level of smtp logging, which will dump messages to the Event Viewer. You can do this by following: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821910 For your DNS issues....Do you still have the external zone on your local DNS server? You shouldn't need to have this. If you want to keep it, create a new A record called www and point it to the IP address of your external website. This should fix that problem. You should be able to remove that external zone. If you do and it still fails, you can try adding specific forwarders for unknown domains on your local DNS server and point them to your ISP DNS servers. Rob
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October 1st, 2007 7:33pm

DNS settings for Exchange is simple , you need to have Valid MX record published on the public DNS servers pointing MX=Outside_Ip_Address -----------------àon Port25---------------àFirewall -----Port25-------àInternal Exchange_Server What happens when you use the ERCA ? post the results pleaseOz Casey, Dedeal, Microsoft MVP - Exchange Server, MCITP (EMA), MCITP (EA), MCITP (SA) Visit smtp25.blogspot.com Visit Telnet25.wordpress.com This posting is provided AS-IS with no warranties or guarantees and confers no rights.
February 28th, 2011 7:37pm

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