Exchange 2003

It may be a local DNS configuration problem for the domain name. As a test try inserting the local IP of your Exchange server in the client's e-mail account configuration for smtp and  pop servers. If this resolves you will have to make manual additions using the DNS management console.

did not work. internal email was working however i know that POP3 service was not running. my understanding was that Act Dir took care of everything.

the problem happenned when i started the add role mail server when i was prompted for the domain i inputed a different domain other than the .local internal. i am tryin to find out how to reverse and map the .local to AD. all users have their default email addresses to .local.

I did not change anything on exchange system manager but im trying to look into it.

where would i change dns to map to the .local domain.  

when i send a message from a client it does not give me any errors. it sends successfully but it does not arrive to the destination.

My knowledge of Exchange is virtually non-existent, however I have seen problems with local name resolution when using the public domain name. For example a laptop used in the field with an SMTP address of smtp.mydomain.com comes into the office and cannot resolve as it is looking to the Internet DNS servers. This is often repaired with local DNS additions as suggested earlier. However you are using .local, that should not have changed. You should verify the domain.local still exists in the DNS management console. but other than that I am not sure of your next step. You might want to post a pointer to this question in the Exchange support topic area.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Networking/Email_Groupware/Exchange_Server/

Hi

Is this a new server? Or a server that was already in production?

You could open up Exchange System Manager and turn on Message tracking.

Right click on the server name go to properties and turn on message tracking.

Send an email from the workstation.

Then in System Manager under tools you can access the Message Tracking Centre to see where the email went.

If you go into Recipient Policies are your domain names still there?

If this is quite a new server, it may just be easier to uninstall and reinstall the whole thing, but i don't know your existing setup.

Thanks for the help. I reinstalled and applied the exchange sp2 on the exchange server. emails are arriving normally for the .local domain. however, i have been trying to add an external domain i bought and i want them to arrive at their same inbox. in other words, i want users to receive multiple domain emails in one inbox. i was trying to follow many guidelines and steps unsuccessfully and thats how i got in trouble.

what would be the best practice? deploy an extra exchange server that holds the configuration for external email or i can configure external email domain along with the .local domain on 1 exchange server.

and if this is possible i would appreciate a good guide on how to do this. so far, i know that i have to confgure a recipient policy with an extra smtp domain, apply the policy, however i am not sure if i need to configure the email clients to receive external email and where.  

to send email, i need to configure a new connector, but i am also not sure how would that work, the emails would go throught the smtp smart host of the ISP? i dont have a public dns or public smtp. i am confused about this. any help is greatly appreciated.

Microsoft have a deployment guide

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=77B6D819-C7B3-42D1-8FBB-FE6339FFA1ED&displaylang=en

What you need to do is get your ISP to point your MX record to your Public IP address that the Exchange server is using.

1 Exchange server can host multiple domains without any problems so there is no need to deploy any additional exchange servers.

You can add the new domain to the Recipient Policy.

Was external emails ever working? Or has this always been an internal mail server?

this has been an internal mail server. i pointed the mx record to the public ip address at the domain registrar not at the ISP. however, the ISP told me that once i configure the modem to all ports open, there is nothing in between and everything should be coming in.

By the way this is the setup at the registrar and I am not sure if i am doing it right

A Host       Points to
xyz.net      65.xx.xx.xxx(my email server real IP)
mail          65.xx.xx.xxx

MX            Goes to
xyz.net      mail.xyz.net

I read through the guide and I realized that I did everything except adding an HTTP virtual server for the new domain in ESM which i guess is mail.xyz.net.

Once I add the HTTP virtual server to ESM, configure the recipient policies is there any other configuration I am missing so that my users can recieve email from that external SMTP domain to their existing outlook?

Do i have to configure their outlook or can they receive the .local emails and the external emails through the same Exchange server account settings  

I tried but was still unable to send or recieve any emails. I think the problem lies on the ISP but ill check with them because I think that they are the only ones that can create and modify MX records not the registrar.

However I am confused about the role of HTTP virtual servers within ESM?