SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

Hi!

We deployed Hosted Exchange 2003 based on MS Provisioning (HMC 3.0). We can create without any problem SMTP domains and recipient policies.

Our recipient policy (by using MPS) for a business organization has a policy which has two different SMTP e-addresses policy:

@domainA.com and @domainB.com

We created the organization with the SMTP domain domainA.com. Later we created additionally SMTP domain domainB.com for the same organization and in the same policy.

Only and only the policy for @domainA.com is applied to the user e-mail addresses. The e-mail addresses policy domainB.com is never applied to.

The option "Automatically update e-mail addresses based on recipient policy" on the User Properties > E-Mail Addresses of a AD user is not enabled on default. If we enable this option, the user get following e-mail addresses and the primary e-mail address domainA.com is no more primary:

After enabled this option: for Example, the e-mail addresses for the user Peter Schwarz are:

- p.schwarz@domainA.com (no more primary)

- p.schwarz_domainA.co@localdomain.net

- p.schwarz@localdomain.net (now this one is primary)

- x.400 address is also applied to user.

Can somebody tell me what is happening in system (MPS or Exchange)? What is wrong and how can we fix this problem?

Best Regards

Cicek

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

Hi,

The primary goal for recipient policy in MS HMC is to let exchange servers receive e-mail messages for hosted organizations. Policy in the solution is not designed for users e-mail generation.

I suggest you read solution documentation more carefully to understand how solution works, especially how MPS manages recipients.

Regards,

Dmitri Gaikovoi

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

Hi Dmitri!

You mean, I cannot create any SMTP e-mail aliases automaticaly by using MS HMC?

Is there any other better solution to automize the e-mail policy?

Best Regards

Cicek

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

Hi,

Try to read "Configure Hosted Exchange for the alpineskihouse Customer Organization" in HMC documentation. It will give you an idea how solution deals with user's e-mail addresses.

Regards,

Dmitri Gaikovoi

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

Hi Dmitri,

the information in section "Configure Hosted Exchange for the alpineskihouse Customer Organization" is not deep enough and does not answer my question.

Best Regards

Cicek

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

It is more than enough to get an idea how HMC works.

Dmitri

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

I think I see your confusion. Let me see if I can help answer this.

First, in an HMC enviroment, the Recipient Update Service (RUS) for Exchange is disabled. This is because the Exchange Provider creates the mailboxes instantly when you create a mailbox. If we were to create mailboxes using the RUS (which is the standard way of doing things), you have to wait for some time before the mailbox is actually created even though you "thought" you created it via the Exchange API's. The other thing the Exchange provider does is set the alias to match what you've requested as the primary mailbox. The RUS would not do that.

To your second issue, via HMC a given organization can have mulitple SMTP "domains". But having an organization with multiple domains does not automatically assign each user/mailbox to each domain. It can be done, but you have to do that per user/mailbox. You could write your own Namespace/Named Procedure to automate this task (assign an alias for each available SMTP domain assigned to the organization when creating the user), but what if you add a new SMTP to an organization that already exists and has users/mailboxes already? Do you go back and update all of those users? As you can see, this is a tricky situation. It's a blend of issues between Exchange Server and the HMC solution.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

exchange 2003 are limited to 99 policy, "not 100% sure of this number but somthing like that"

and using the RUS to generate smtp addresses will put you under this limitations,,,

by disabling the exhchange policy, then the smtp servers will not recognize the smtp domains internaly and they will start refuse smtp connections from mail servers sending to your domains emails..

to avoide this,

1- disable the policy
2- use the MPS scripts insted to create the proxy address for the users
3- use the SMTP Event Sinks , domain.dat file that will sync with the MPS SQL database ro any database used for the hosted domains.

never run the rus... it will confuse the whole solution!!!

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

Hi,

My question is that even though am using MPS to create the organisation, the users and I enabled them for exchange hosing via the sample web application, no receipient policy is automatically created so in essence such organisation are not enable to receive e-mails until I have to create the receipient policy manually. Is this how the solution works? or is it that am doing something wrong. I do not have a dedicted SMTP Server at the moment so my Exchange Server also serves as my SMTP Server.

Thanks for your kind help.

Sam

Re: SMTP E-Mail Addresses Policy Problem!!!

The Typical exhcnage hosting as follows:

The MPS will
1-communicate with the AD, to create the organization, and it will set the permession for this ORG.

2- it will create the default groups, and users into this org

3- when you create a new user in this organization, the mps scripts will create the user account, and it will create the proxy address for this user as specified in the org, and it will create the mailbox and its attributes in the exchange.

4- the mps will keep update the SQL database for whats going on, and it will use this database to rule back if somthing goes wrong in the middle:

usualy in a non hosting setup, the user creation will happen manualy, and the AD will replicate with the exchange for the smtp address, and the exchange will use this policy informations to accept incomming emails to the internal domains.

in the hosted setup, the exchange will not have a policy to be replicated with the AD, so the mps will set the proxy address, and the exchange will not handle this part., but here the exchange will start refuse incomming emails to the internal domains, becasue it doesnt know about the domains hosted... so for this, you need to set the smtp event on the SMTP servers, in your case, you have only the back end servers, then you have to setup the smtp even sinck on the back end servers,

the smtp event sink, is a registry keys, and a file, called domains.dat that will include the list of your hosted internal domains " abc.com as an example" and this file has to be updated as you add new domains in your setup.

you can use the schedule tasks, to run a script in your sql servers, so this script will pull the domain names from its database, and it will update the domains.dat file on the exchange servers.

i hope this cleared the idea!

regards.
nizar.