Configure Exchange to accept mail at two different sites [locations]

[azzy]

Currently we have two sites, one in California [westcoast.com] and the other in Boston [eastcoast.com]. Our corporate e-mail domain is mycompany.com and each location has an Exchange server and is connected via a site connector and a directory replication connector.
Corporate e-mail works between both sites we can send and receive email to any address
in the GAL.

Both sites have external SMTP servers however the Boston SMTP server is configured with an alias table. When e-mail is send to USER1@mycompany.com [this users mail box resides on the Exchange server in California] it is compared to the alias table if a match if found example: [USER1: USER1@westcoast.com] then the e-mail would be redirected to the SMTP server for westcoast.com then delivered to the exchange server. Mail for USER2@mycompany.com whose mail box resides on the Boston Exchange server passes right through and is delivered.

I created a mail box on the California Exchange server and entered the following as the SMTP address smtptest@mycompany.com. When mail is sent to this address the Exchange server in Boston bounces the mail and an undeliverable error is sent to the sender: The recipient name is not recognized, bla bla bla…

QUESTION
How can I get both Exchange servers to accept mail sent to @mycompany.com if half the users reside on the Exchange server in California and the rest in Boston? I want to have e-mail arrive at either site and delivered to the user’s mail box regardless of their location.

I am self taught in Exchange so I do not know that much and I hope this make sense.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.




--Ingo

 

[Spirit]

Basically you can't to my knowledge. Your MX record must point to an IP address. You may be able to have multiple records for a single domain but this would be more load balancing rather than effective routing.

Why not just forward all mail to Domain.com to your main site (the one with the best IT expertise) then forward any mail for otherdomain.com to them?

Check out XFOR: How to Configure Exchange to Share SMTP Domain Name Space for some help;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;258203

Good luck,

Iain

 

[Griffyn]

Multiple MX records aren't for load-balancing - they're for fault-tolerance.

Iain is right though - you can't have mail routed to the appropriate server before it arrives in your organization. Exchange will push messages to the correct server in the correct site though without any configuration. Just use the Site Connector.

 

[azzy]

Thanks Griffyn and Spirit [Iain] for your help and input. I was able to figure this out, seems that my east coast admin did not give me all the information on the current setup over there. Once i was completely filled in with all the details i was able to get this to work properly. it seems that i had to enable Reroute incoming SMTP mail and added mycompany.com. We also had to reconfigure the mailer table on the sendmail server.

--Ingo

 

[benam5]

Ingo:

Could you please show me how to do the replication? I also need to do it for my company but don't know where to start! Do I need to physically connect the two offices via T1? Thanks.

Linh