Second Exchange 2003 Server
I'm trying to recieve external e-mail for the same domain on two different servers. I have already installed the second Exchange server and it works great internally, but I am unable to recieve e-mail from external sources. I know that clustering is the preferred method, but that solution is not practicle for the size of our company. Basically, I have one Exchange server at one location and a second at a remote location. Both are part of the same domain and can currently communicate with each other, I'm just having trouble connecting to the 2nd one from external sources. It looks like the firewall will not allow the traffic in, but the firewall in configured properly and I can connect to the exchage server from other ports, so it's unlikely that the firewall is the issue. First of all, is it even possible to accept external e-mail using two different exchange servers with different public IPs? I would assume so, but for some reason, it's not working. I have already setup an additional MX record, it's already part of the domain and it does work internally. I know there's a lot of information missing, but can anyone tell me if they currently recieve e-mail addressed to the same domain name (@domain.com) using two MX records and two exchange servers located at two different locations (part of the same domain, connected of a WAN connection, etc....)? The answer to this question will at least let me know if I'm wasting my time or not. Thanks in advance,
March 17th, 2008 8:48pm

I believe this is possible. I have 2 mail gateway servers that external email hits for our domain. I had to add MX records on my internal DNS servers and requested my ISP add MX records to their DNS.
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March 17th, 2008 11:35pm

Thanks Monicola! I assumed it would work, but for some reason, it's not. I see the traffic hitting my firewall, I see that my firewall is accepting the traffic, but I don't see that it's actually hitting the server. There's just a switch between the firewall and the server, so there really isn't much more that it can be. I think that my firewall is defective, but before I spent anymore time on this project, I wanted to make sure that Exchange was actually capable of working like I want it to. Since you have yours setup that way, then it's possible! Thanks again, Steve
March 18th, 2008 6:37pm

You are welcome Steve. Have you checked the SMTP Protocol on your 2nd Exchange server (System Manager, Administrative Groups, %SiteName%, Servers, %ServerName%, Protocols, SMTP)? Do you have logging enabled on the General tab? Maybe the logs will have some information. Is your second Exchange server able to send out emails to the internet?
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March 19th, 2008 8:32pm

I did enable logging for a while, but it didn't show anything abnormal. I'm thinking that my firewall is defective. I spent hours verifying the settings, even called the manufacturer to make sure and everything is setup properly. Everything else concerning the firewall works fine, except for port forwarding (or so it appears). I can send e-mail out, but it goes through an SMTP replay located at the primary location (over a point-to-point t1 line). It's also possible that I have a configuration issue. This may be a stupid question, but do you use the same SMTP connector for both servers or do you have two SMTP connectors, each listed as a Bridgehead server on their own SMTP connector?
March 20th, 2008 1:25am

I have one server with an SMTP connector to the internt. My email flow is as follows: email coming in from the internet hits one of my two SMTP gateways. These gateways have anti-virus and anti-spam software. Once the email is scanned the gateway routes it to my bridgehead server. My bridgehead server either delivers the email locally to its own databases or routes it to one of our other sites. Outbound email works the same way in reverse. Did you create a separate routing group for your second Exchange server? Here's an article that may help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822929
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March 20th, 2008 2:36am

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