This weekend we moved our mail server. After many troubles with copying we managed to get it running on the new host (ESXi5.5).

For the mail server we opened ports 80, 443, 135 and 25. All dns records point to the new IP. I also recreated the recursive lookup zone for the new internal ip.

Yet, mail flow is not working while I can connect and login on owa and connect with Outlook from both inside and outside the network. Internal mail, even from and to the same address is not working.

This is the first time we moved a mail server and we might have missed something. Any ideas where to look?

• Edited by Jason Mulder 20 hours 4 minutes ago Extra information

hi,please check if exchange services are up and running.Try to restart transport delivery and transport submission service.

Does message stay in outbox or do they appear in sent items?

Do you have multiple nics on those exchange servers and are they both registered to DNS?

Hi, thanks for replying.

The services are running and the mail does end up in the send items.

The server has only one nic, not sure what you mean by registering to dns. It is set to resolve from 127.0.0.1.

I was looking at the receive connectors, the bind to a port, 2525 in my case. Do I need to forward these from outside?

this seems like send connector is working,can you send e-mail to external (gmail,hotmail) to see if it works?

For mails not receiving,please check queue viewer,there it should pin point to what causes the error.

Have you checked that all mail servers are having same IP after the incident?Does telnet work?

Port 2525 is a hubtransport receive connector (Default XXX,where XXX is your server name).This connector  Accepts connections from Mailbox servers running the Transport service and from Edge servers.

So it is a connector used for sending mails within the DAG.So there is no need to open port from the outside.

The one you should be looking for is Default FrontEnd <server name> .This one is using port 25 and is the common entry point.

Please check if IP is updated on all receive connectors.By default all available IPV4 and IPV6 is used.Instead add the new correct ip instead.

Good luck!

Mail to external server is not working, although it ends up in the sent items.

On the qeue viewer I see 2 different errors:

DNS Query failed. The error was: DNS query failed with error ErrorRetry

Error encountered while communicating with primary target ip address. Unable to connect. (and something about fail over, not applicable since we have none)

Looking at these errors it looks like its the dns server?

The Default Frontend MAIL receive connector is indeed binded to port 25 and I changed the ip binding to the correct ip.

Looking into the dns I see this warning: pastebin.com/jwdM3u9M

But the dns server is started 10 seconds later.

Edit:

For the telnet test, when I connect from outside to port 25 I get: 

421 No SMTP service here

But, when testing at mxtoolbox.com I get:

Connecting to 31.201.xxx.xxx

220 mail.xxx.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Mon, 9 Feb 2015 19:56:44 +0100 [686 ms]
EHLO MXTB-PWS3.mxtoolbox.com
250-mail.xxxx.com Hello [64.20.xxx.xxx]
250-SIZE 524288000
250-PIPELINING
250-DSN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-STARTTLS
250-X-ANONYMOUSTLS
250-AUTH
250-X-EXPS GSSAPI NTLM
250-8BITMIME
250-BINARYMIME
250-CHUNKING
250 XRDST [749 ms]
MAIL FROM: <supertool@mxtoolbox.com>
250 2.1.0 Sender OK [749 ms]
RCPT TO: <test@example.com>
550 5.7.1 Unable to relay [5756 ms]

MXTB-PWS3v2 9235ms

• Edited by Jason Mulder 16 hours 51 minutes ago

hi,did you change DNS after server got new ip?

also check if autodiscover.domain.com and mx record is pointing to the new IP you gave to Exchange server.

If you use TMG or other firewall also check that IP for your exchange servers is updated.

Do you use any firewall to accept smtp service from specific servers only?If so please check if ip is updated there to.

1. At a command prompt, type nslookup, and then press ENTER.

2. Type server <IP address>, where IP address is the IP address of your external DNS server, and then press ENTER.

3. Type set q=MX, and then press ENTER.

4. Type <domain name>, where domain name is the name of your domain, and then press ENTER. The MX record for the domain you entered should be displayed. If the MX record is not displayed, DNS is not configured properly.

also do nslookup mail.domain.com (where mail. is the link you use to access OWA)

Please refer to this article on testing telnet :

http://exchangeserverpro.com/how-to-send-email-via-telnet/

Hi,

Dns was indeed changed after the move. In our current setup we actually have 2 firewalls... One is the modem from the provider and one is our own router.

Nslookup goes fine while telnet from my pc still returns with: 421 No SMTP service here

But when telnetting from inside the network to the internal ip it will connect just fine.

The command below is not accepted by the exchange server.

mail from: test@test.com

its good that you cant connect with telnet from outside,should only be from inside and certian servers that requires relay.

when you do nslookup only,which DC does your exchange connect to?

Do you see anything in event log on that dc?

If you have another DC,try to change DC with following command in CMD (on your exchange server)

If you run following command:

Get-ADServerSettings | fl

Isvalid  set to true?

Try to change to another DC with this command

Set-ADServerSettings -PreferredServer dc2.domain.local

The results from the Get-ADServerSettings | fl are here: pastebin.com/KwzBKLv4

The AD is running on the same server. I did Set-ADServerSettings -PreferredServer mail.xxx.local

Hi,

according to Your output,is it correct that its mail.xxx.com ?

Do you have internal zone for .com in Your dns?

And is Your AD/DNS installed on same server as Exchange?