Here's the situation:

We have a printer that can scan a document and email that scanned document as a pdf attachment.  Currently the way I have accomplished this is to create a resource mailbox for our printer and assign it an SMTP address.  By default, a resource mailbox is linked to a disabled Active Directory account.  So I went into Active Directory Users and Computers and enabled the AD account linked to the resource mailbox and set a password on it.  After that, I went to the printer and configured its SMTP settings with the AD credentials (AD user name, smtp email address, AD password).

This has been working absolutely perfectly.  But before I consider it a settled question, I wanted to know if this is considered an acceptable, reasonable practice.  I'd also like to know if there's a different way of accomplishing this that is a 'best practice'.

Lastly, I'd like to know if the printer's AD account were to be disable again, would the printer still be able to send scans using the credentials I have provided it?

Hi bpoindexter,

please see also http://www.msexchange.org/kbase/ExchangeServerTips/ExchangeServer2010/SetupDeployment/AnonymousRelayReceiveConnector.html

Common practice to allow anonymous relay is to create a separate receive connector (as described in the link), where you can add more devices to the remote Network if they require to send mail anonymously.

Do not change your (authenticated) default connectors to achieve that.

Regards,
Martin

• Proposed as answer by Gudel, Martin 10 hours 17 minutes ago
• Marked as answer by bpoindexter 10 hours 11 minutes ago