... for those who have the patience to read all this. Thanks. 
Here is the scenario:
-Two companies merge: Company A (domain.com), Company B (olddomainname.com)
-Mail Servers in 3 locations: Site 1(PostFix SMTP), Site 2(Exchange 2000), Site 3 (Exchange 5.5/ASP-controlled)
-Domains: (domain.com, s2.domain.com, s3.domain.com
-Sample Users: user2@domain.com resides at site 2 / user3@domain.com resides at site 3
Here is what happened:
The original company (domain.com) has one Exchange 2000 server(mixed) running on a native Windows 2000 domain. The merging company has a vast engineering team and made a few decisions to resolve e-mail merger. A simple SMTP server was set up at the co-location site (site 1). This server acts as a gateway to the two other companies. I.E. User at site 2 has an e-mail address of user2@domain.com. The SMTP server (gateway) at Site 1 forwards the mail to user@s2.domain.com which is the Exchange 2000 server.
Problem:
Receiving mail from the "outside" world works perfectly. When a MAPI user at Site 2 sends e-mail to user2@domain.com it works fine. When that same user sends an e-mail to user3@domain.com it comes back with a unknown user error. I create a contact that forwards to the s3.domain.com and this works. The problem is that this solution really sucks. Everytime the sysadmin at Site 1 creates an e-mail address he has to alert the sysadmin at Site 2 and 3.
This is what I would like:
Site 2 routes all mail sent to *.domain.com back to Site 1. Site 1 in turn returns the e-mail back to Site 2 if the user lives there. This way, admin at Site 1 can create aliases without telling admin at Site 2. I set up routing this way and the darn server started looping all the e-mail. Exchange (Site 2) looks at the final destination address of *.domain.com and decides to re-forward all over again!
Some more notes:
I cannot link the sites via MS Exchange Sites because they are all incompatible in this sense. Native Active Directory cannot link to a NT Domain and the third site is an ASP anyways. Site 1 is just a vanilla *NIX SMTP server.
Some IDEAS:
I have my hands on two really nice servers and am thinking of setting up the Win2K domain from scratch. I just don't see how I can resolve this issue even if I started from scratch.
I hope this all makes sense. Its like a big puzzle but I have to solve it eventually. Thanks to everyone who has the patience to read all this. I appreciate it.
Here is the scenario:
-Two companies merge: Company A (domain.com), Company B (olddomainname.com)
-Mail Servers in 3 locations: Site 1(PostFix SMTP), Site 2(Exchange 2000), Site 3 (Exchange 5.5/ASP-controlled)
-Domains: (domain.com, s2.domain.com, s3.domain.com
-Sample Users: user2@domain.com resides at site 2 / user3@domain.com resides at site 3
Here is what happened:
The original company (domain.com) has one Exchange 2000 server(mixed) running on a native Windows 2000 domain. The merging company has a vast engineering team and made a few decisions to resolve e-mail merger. A simple SMTP server was set up at the co-location site (site 1). This server acts as a gateway to the two other companies. I.E. User at site 2 has an e-mail address of user2@domain.com. The SMTP server (gateway) at Site 1 forwards the mail to user@s2.domain.com which is the Exchange 2000 server.
Problem:
Receiving mail from the "outside" world works perfectly. When a MAPI user at Site 2 sends e-mail to user2@domain.com it works fine. When that same user sends an e-mail to user3@domain.com it comes back with a unknown user error. I create a contact that forwards to the s3.domain.com and this works. The problem is that this solution really sucks. Everytime the sysadmin at Site 1 creates an e-mail address he has to alert the sysadmin at Site 2 and 3.
This is what I would like:
Site 2 routes all mail sent to *.domain.com back to Site 1. Site 1 in turn returns the e-mail back to Site 2 if the user lives there. This way, admin at Site 1 can create aliases without telling admin at Site 2. I set up routing this way and the darn server started looping all the e-mail. Exchange (Site 2) looks at the final destination address of *.domain.com and decides to re-forward all over again!
Some more notes:
I cannot link the sites via MS Exchange Sites because they are all incompatible in this sense. Native Active Directory cannot link to a NT Domain and the third site is an ASP anyways. Site 1 is just a vanilla *NIX SMTP server.
Some IDEAS:
I have my hands on two really nice servers and am thinking of setting up the Win2K domain from scratch. I just don't see how I can resolve this issue even if I started from scratch.
I hope this all makes sense. Its like a big puzzle but I have to solve it eventually. Thanks to everyone who has the patience to read all this. I appreciate it.
