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Reply With Quoteleco (29th June 2010)
OK not sure about this one:
I have an Exchange 2010 installation (finally) the RBC have told me that I need to put something into my external DNS. Could some kind person tell me where I do this please?
Depends on who hosts your external DNS but the thing that they will be talking about is a MX record pointing to an A record (subdomain) that resolves to your external IP address so that mail servers know where to send any email for your domain name. You will need to have port mapping setup on your external router/firewall to point all port 25 traffic received to your exchange server.
Edit so you want to make sure you have an A record something like mail.yourdomain.school.uk pointing to your external IP and have the MX record point to mail.yourdomain.school.uk
You may need to contact whoever provides your internet or manages your domain name to get them to change it if you do not have access to it directly.
Last edited by SYNACK; 29th June 2010 at 07:20 PM.
leco (29th June 2010)
You will either need to add forwarder entries into your DNS servers or use a smarthost to forward your mail for you. I suggest it might be the former since DNS was mentioned.
Configure a DNS server to use forwarders: Domain Name System(DNS) should give you an idea where to start.
leco (29th June 2010)
Currently all email is sent via an SMTP smarthost connector to the RBC (smtp.rbc.net) - this continues to be so. All inward mail is pushed from the LA (though I suspect it's the RBC really) directly to my Exchange server. New Exchange server so change of IP to push to.
The external DNS record points to what I think is a sub domain (mail.schoolname.laname.sch.uk) and is a CNAME to the RBC (rp1-wak.rbc.net)
Does that make any sense to you - cos it doesn't to me
Last edited by leco; 29th June 2010 at 07:37 PM.
Not sure on that one as I have only dealt with directly connected ones so not to sure on the logistics of your setup.
Yea that's the problem with looking at MS reports and articles, they can't take local situations into account. Getting through the grid for anything is a pain to say the least.Originally Posted by SYNACK
It depends on how they have it setup I guess, they could have it chaining directly through using a DNS record inside their system which would point to your mail server inside the RBC WAN, as you had a 2003 server it is probably pointing to it at the moment. In this case you may be able to get the info by doing a nslookup {old exchange ip} on a system that uses the RBC DNS directly. This may give you the RBC side DNS entry that needs to be altered.
Alternatively they could have set it up as an SMTP pull type system where you need to configure your exchange server to talk to theirs and ask for any new mail. I have only heard about these systems so have no idea on where to start on that one. Your old mail server may yield some clues in its setup though so may be worth a look through to see if you can find anything fancy. SMTP outbound via a smarthost is realitivly common via a connector but as suggested by the name only handles outbound traffic not inbound.
The new setting from the grid points to the new Exchange server IP - that's what the change request was for I think. The connectors on both my 2003 and 2010 have the same smtp settings. I just don't know where I'm supposed to put this new external DNS CNAME record.
What exactly is the external CNAME that you got, is it an internal rbc one or one for your school domain itself, if you already had the school domain setup to point to the RBC and the records have not changed so long as they changed their internal stuff it will probably just work. If its an internal one then I'm not sure.
Message reads:
Put into the external DNS the following: mail.schoolname.leaname.sch.uk CNAME rp1-wak.rbcname.net
This will take effect between 2-3 hours as it needs this time to propogate.
(schoolname - leaname - and rbcname are given for my locations, I have changed them here for some anonymity)
As you had a server already setup that record may already exist, what you want to do is look at your existing DNS records and make sure that they already point to that location. In windows command prompt:
and make sure that your current MX record points to rp1-wak.rbcname.net if not then you will need to talk to whoever manages your external DNS to make that change. You should be able to find out who manages it by using a whois lookup on the domain like the one on this page http://network-tools.com/ which should give your the administrative contact.Code:nslookup set type=All schoolname.leaname.sch.uk
leco (29th June 2010)
OK the MX mail exchangers (there are two of them) are pointing to smpt1-wak.rbcname.net and smtp2.rbcname.net.
Questions then - would the person that looks after our school web site be the person to ask perhaps? Do both of the smtp records get changed or just one of them?
Around here all the zones under "<leaname>.sch.uk" are on the RBCs (authoritative) name servers so they do it. This is context sensitive i.e. don't think you can avoid talking to your RBC or some other local school for information about how things work there.
Not allowed to talk to the RBC direct - have to go through the LEA ICT helpdesk. They have passed on the email from the RBC and have said that's all they have to do since they don't support Exchange! Which I find less than helpful.
Mmm.. some LAs are clearly much better than others then.They have passed on the email from the RBC and have said that's all they have to do since they don't support Exchange! Which I find less than helpful.
There is of course another interpretation to that message: Could that simply be the RBC (badly) informing you that they have added that CNAME i.e. you don't need to do anything?
If you do an nslookup of "mail.schoolname.leaname.sch.uk" (from home) what does it say?
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