Sponsored Links

Managing A Shared Address Space in Exchange 2007

Background

If you’re in the situation where your organisation is split and has more than one email server, but you want to share the public domain name, Exchange 2007 has a nice easy way to deal with this. There are various reasons this scenario can arise, perhaps you recently acquired another company and haven’t migrated all the services to one server, or perhaps you want to keep operations separate as you expect to spin off a division in the near future. Maybe it’s just good old fashioned internal politics that means you’ve got 2 IT departments and neither with let go of their server!

What we want is that mail sent from either server appears to be from the same .com address space and that email in can be delivered to recipients at either office. Equally we also need users at either office to be able to email each other without getting a bounce.

In all the example below, replace mycompany.com with your own domain address space, and use your own hostnames. You can call them anything you like so long as you put them in your DNS.

Scenario 1

For this example, I’m going to make the following assumptions:

  • That you are using Exchange 2007 in your local office – we’ll call that the UK office, hostname is ukmail.mycompany.com
  • In the remote office, we’ll call that the US office, you’re using some other SMTP server but it could be any type – we’ll call that server usmail.mycompany.com
  • Under normal circumstances mail is delivered to your US server ie. The MX record points at usmail.mycompany.com
  • We want all mail sent out as user@mycompany.com
  • Address/contact lists are managed separately by each office
  • You have either a single Exchange Server, Small Business Server or have configured an Edge Transport Subscription if you have separated that role onto another server.
  • The UK server would normally be Authoritive for this domain. This means that the UK server is the last port of call and is responsible for generating NDR for invalid recipient addresses.

In this scenario, the US server will need some sort of forwarding rule so that email for UK users is forwarded to the uk server.

Configuration

  1. Configure your external DNS:
    1. Create a DNS A record for ukmail.mycompany.com and for usmail.mycompany.com if they don’t already exist (you will need a public static IP address for each server).
    2. Create an MX record using the FQDN usmail.mycompanymail.com. (note the trailing period)
  2. Open the Exchange Management Console
  3. Expand Organisation Configuration and select Hub Transport and the Accepted Domains tab
  4. To the right of the screen under Actions, click on New Accepted Domain...
  5. Enter a name to identify the domain in the console – I would just call it the same as the domain name so in my example I’d enter mycompany.com
  6. In the Accepted Domain box enter mycompany.com
  7. Select Internal Relay Domain
  8. Click New and then Finish
  9. Now select the Send Connectors tab
  10. On the right side of the screen under Actions click on New Send Connector...
  11. On the intro page under Name: enter US relay connector or something else descriptive
  12. Under Select the intended use for this Send connector, select Internet then click Next
  13. Under Address Space click Add, then enter mycompany.com
  14. Click OK, then Next
  15. Under Network Settings, select Use Domain Name System (DNS) “MX” records to route mail automatically
  16. Under Source Server, click Add, the local server should automatically show on the list so select it.
  17. Click OK, then Next
  18. Click New, then Finish

       

    Scenario 2

    For this example, I’m going to make the following assumptions:

    • That you are using Exchange 2007 in your local office – we’ll call that the UK office, hostname is ukmail.mycompany.com
    • In the remote office, we’ll call that the US office, you’re using some other SMTP server but it could be any type – we’ll call that server usmail.mycompany.com
    • Under normal circumstances mail is delivered to your UK server ie. The MX record points at ukmail.mycompany.com
    • We want all mail sent out as user@mycompany.com
    • Address/contact lists are managed separately by each office
    • You have either a single Exchange Server, Small Business Server or have configured an Edge Transport Subscription if you have separated that role onto another server
    • The US server would normally be Authoritive for this domain. This means that the US server is the last port of call and is responsible for generating NDR for invalid recipient addresses

    Configuration

    1. Configure your external DNS:
      1. Create a DNS A record for ukmail.mycompany.com and for usmail.mycompany.com if they don’t already exist (you will need a public static IP address for each server).
      2. Create an MX record using the FQDN ukmail.mycompanymail.com.(note the trailing period)
    2. Open the Exchange Management Console
    3. Expand Organisation Configuration and select Hub Transport and the Accepted Domains tab.
    4. To the right of the screen under Actions, click on New Accepted Domain...
    5. Enter a name to identify the domain in the console – I would just call it the same as the domain name so in my example I’d enter mycompany.com
    6. In the Accepted Domain box enter mycompany.com
    7. Select Internal Relay Domain
    8. Click New and then Finish
    9. Now select the Send Connectors tab
    10. On the right side of the screen under Actions click on New Send Connector...
    11. On the intro page under Name: enter US relay connector or something else descriptive
    12. Under Select the intended use for this Send connector, select Internet then click Next
    13. Under Address Space click Add, then enter mycompany.com
    14. Click OK, then Next
    15. Under Network Settings, select Route all mail through the following smart hosts. Click Add
    16. In Add Smart Host, enter usmail.mydomain.com, click OK, then Next
    17. Under Source Server, click Add, the local server should automatically show on the list so select it.
    18. Click OK, then Next
    19. Click New, then Finish

    Important.

    You should not replicate the same setup onto both the US and UK servers or you may end up with a mail routing loop – ie. Messages to invalid addresses bouncing backwards and forwards between the two servers for ever.

    Back To Servers

    Options