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lapukman

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2003 Exchange servers wont exchange email between them

Hi Experts.

I have two 2003 Exchange Servers on my test lab. One is installed on the parent domain. The other is installed on the child domain. Users within the exchange server in parent domain are able to send email to each other. Same goes for users of other  exchange server in the child domain.

The problem is when users try to send email to those not on their domain. The email just stays in the que of both exchange servers.

My exchange servers are standard edition and are running on top of windows 2003 standard edition. The first exchange server was installed on the  parent domain. The second was installed on the child domain. We followed the checklist  on the exchange installation wizzard. To install the exchange on the child domain we chose the option "install exchange 2003 on additional servers" in the wizzard.

Both exchange servers are under a single organization and under the same administrative group.  Each server is under a different routing group. We have created a routing group connector .

I am not an exchange expert, but i followed the steps in installing exchange as listed on the wizzard. Is there something i missed. Please help !!!

Thankyou very much
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joedoe58

Did you check that under Global parameters - internet message format - SMTP you have entered a * instead of your domain name?
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Hi joedoe58,

I took a look at your comment. Using Exchange Manager, I clicked Internet Message format . There is an entry named Default . Its  properties show the SMTP domain to be "*" but i could not change it as it is greyed-out. I could not delete the Default entry also .

I tried adding  a new entries in  Internet Message format  with SMTP domains reflecting the parent and child domains FQDN. The mesages still get stuck in the que when users try to send to other users in the other domain. Note that the parent and child domains are both internal domains.

What should i do next ?
Do you have a mx record in dns for the servers?
Hi Joedoe58,

Thanks for the repsonse.

Yes, my DNS record has MX records for the Exchange servers. The mx record for the exchange server in the parent domain is located in the forward lookup zone of the parent domain. Likewise the mx record for the exchange server in the child domain is located in the forward lookup zone of the child domain. Both parent and child domains use the same DNS server.



Can you connect to any remote Exchange servers?

telnet maila.microsoft.com 25

Depending on whether you get a response or not will depend on whether traffic is flowing correctly.

You may have to use an SMTP Connector to send email via your ISPs SMTP server.
http://www.amset.info/exchange/smtp-connector.asp

Simon.
Exchange MVP
You said that you have the mx record of each server in it's own domain, but can the other domain see that record? If you do a nslookup with set type=mx from the child domain on the parent domain exchange server do you get a correct answer?

Hi Sembee and joedoe58,

We are not sending email to the internet. As of now we are just planning to use it for internal email between our sites. From Exchange server in the child domain i can telnet to the exchange server on the parent domain using port 25. Same for from parent to child.

When I do an nslookup , set type=mx  and query both domains ( from the exchange server on  the parent or child domain), the results shows the correct mx records for the corresponding and ip addresses.

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joedoe58

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Hi All,

Just to add afew things, when i restart both servers, the que becomes empty and the mail delivered to the users on the other exchange server as intended. But once the servers are fully up again, email destined for the other mail server just stay stuck in the que forever without  any NDR.
Hi everyone,

My test lab is now working fine. Am able to send email between parent and child domain. I am not sure exactly what resolved this today. But I think it was the Norton Anti Virus that was preventing the email from being sent. What i did was I unchecked all the email protection in SAV9 and rebooted the servers. To my surprise everything is ok now. Will confirm if it is indeed the SAV 9  and will post it here .

thanks to everyone
Hi,

I have confirmed that the culprit is SAV 9 . The SAV 9  Microsoft Exchange Auto-protect option was preventing  the sending of email to the other exchange server. I have unchecked it and everything looks good.

Thanks