Exchange team announced that the service pack 1 for exchange 2010 has been released. As its beta release this is not recommended for production servers, you can use this in your lab environment.
You can download the service pack 1 Beta from here
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Configuring multiple E-mail domains in exchange 2010
We can configure Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 to accept e-mail for more than one SMTP domains. In this article I will show you how to configure the accepted domains and how to create the new email address policy for the new e-mail domain
Scenarios:-
- Your Company has different independent business units and the each of them need different e-mail domains; company management doesn’t want to spend money for this.
- You Providing the email hosting service and have to accept e-mail for more than one SMTP domain name
Prerequisites
- A public DNS MX resource record is required for each SMTP domain for which you accept e-mail from the Internet. Each MX record should resolve to the Internet-facing server that receives e-mail for your organization.
- Send and Receive connectors should be configured, so that the Exchange organization can send e-mail to and receive e-mail from the Internet.
There are two steps to configure exchange 2010 to accept e-mail for more than one SMTP domains. The initial step is configuring the accepted domain and the second one is create or modify the email policy.
Use the EMC to configure Exchange 2010 to accept e-mail for more than one domain
Expand the Organization Configuration node, and then click Hub Transport. In the results pane, click the Accepted Domains tab.
In the action pane, click New Accepted Domain, or right-click and select the New Accepted Domain from the Accepted Domains tab. Then the New Accepted Domain wizard appears.
Figure: 1
On the New Accepted Domain page, type a name to identify the accepted domain entry. In the Accepted Domain field, type the SMTP domain name. Select Authoritative Domain. E-mail is delivered to a recipient in this Exchange organization.
Click New to create the Accepted Domain.
Figure: 2
Now you can see that the Authoritative Accepted Domain shareef.info has been created and listed in the Accepted Domain tab
Figure: 3
Now we need to configure the email address policy for the newly created authoritative domain. To do this either we can create new email address policy or edit the existing email address policy. I prefer to create the new email address policy.
To create the new email address policy expand the Organization Configuration node, and then click Hub Transport. In the results pane, click the E-mail Address Policies tab.
In the action pane, click New E-mail Address Policy or right-click and select the New E-Mail Address Policy from the E-mail Address Policies tab.
Figure: 4
Type a name for the e-mail address policy in this example its @shareef.info. If the users that will be assigned this new e-mail address policy are all in a specific organizational unit (OU), click Browse to restrict this e-mail address policy to that specific OU. Select an option under Include these recipient types to determine to which recipient types this e-mail address policy will be applied, in this example I choose Users with Exchange Mailbox, you can select this option as per your exchange environment. Click Next.
Figure: 5
If you want to specify any condition for this policy specify the same. In this example I prefer not to specify any condition. Click Next to continue.
Figure: 6
On the E-mail Addresses page, click Add to specify the domain for the E-mail Address and the E-mail address local part.
Figure: 7
In the SMTP E-mail Address dialog box, select the option under E-mail address local part that determines how the recipient’s e-mail address alias will be generated.
Click the Select the accepted domain for the e-mail address option, and then click Browse. In the Select Accepted Domain dialog box, select an accepted domain, in this example its shareef.info and then click OK. Click OK again to close the SMTP E-mail Address dialog box.
Figure: 8
Click Next to continue.
Figure: 9
In the Schedule page, select an option to specify when the e-mail address policy will be applied and the maximum length of time that the task is permitted to run. I am choosing immediately.
Click Next.
Figure: 10
Click New to create the new E-Mail Address Policy
Figure: 11
The New E-Mail Address Policy task has been completed successfully. Click Finish to exit the wizard.
Figure: 12
In this screenshot you can see the new email address policy has been applied.
Figure: 13
PowerShell commands for configuring the Exchange 2010 to accept e-mail for more than one domain
To create the New Authoritative Accepted Domain
New-AcceptedDomain -Name “blog.shareef.info” -DomainName shareef.info -DomainType Authoritative
To create the New E-Mail Address Policy
New-EmailAddressPolicy -Name “@shareef.info” -IncludedRecipients UserMailbox -ConditionalDepartment “Fourth Coffee” -Priority 1 -EnabledEmailAddressTemplates “SMTP:@fourthcoffee.com”
To apply the New E-Mail Address Policy to the recipients
Update-EmailAddressPolicy -Identity “@shareef.info”
Configuring the DAG Replication and Failover in Exchange Server 2010 Part-3
This is the continuation from the Configuring the DAG Replication and Failover in Exchange Server 2010 Part-2. In this part I will show you how to create mailbox database copy, how to test the DAG failover availability.
Creating the Mailbox Database Copy:-
To create the Mailbox Database Copy open the exchange management console, then select the Mailbox under the organization configuration from the console tree, from the right panel select the Database Management tab then right-click the appropriate database and select the add Mailbox Database Copy
Figure: 1
For selecting the mailbox server who is going to host the database copy click the browse button
Figure: 2
In this example I have only one mailbox server so I am selecting mbx01 to host the copy or the mbx01 database. If you have multiple mailbox servers you can choose multiple mailbox servers. Click ok to add the mailbox server.
Note: maximum number of mailbox server which can host the single database copy is 16
Then click next button to create the Mailbox Database Copy
Figure: 3
Our Mailbox Database Copy has been successfully created, we can see the confirmation from the below screenshot. Click finish to exit the configuration task
Figure: 4
In the below screenshot we can see mailbox database DAG_DB has two copies of the database and it is hosted in MBX01 and MBX02. DB01 is located on MBX01 and it doesn’t have replication copy.
Figure: 5
We are created the Database copy for testing the DAG functionality. Now we need to create a mailbox in DAG_DB database.
For that right-click the Mailbox under the Recipient Configuration from the console tree then select the New Mailbox.
Figure: 6
Select the User Mailbox and click Next->>
Figure: 7
Select the New User and click Next->>
Figure: 8
Fill the user account information details and password, Click Next to continue
Figure: 9
Select the DAG_DB (Copy enabled mailbox) and click ok
Figure: 10
Click next continue, in the next the step it will prompt you for the creating the archive mailbox, if you want to creating the archive mailbox you can select the check box. In this scenario I am not using the archive feature.
After the archiving prompt click next then it will ask you for the confirmation for creating the mailbox, If all the information’s are correct click New to create the Mailbox
Figure: 11
Now we are created the Mailbox
Figure: 12
The below screenshot we can see the mailbox name shareef is created in DAG_DB (copy enabled database). You can see that the administrator Mailbox is located in DB01. We are not enabled the database copy on DB01.
Figure: 13
Now it’s the time for test the DAG failover functionality, so I am login to OWA with the username shareef
Figure: 14
This is the first time I am login with the username shareef, so need to choose the language and time zone. Right now I am in Qatar so I am choosing time zone as +3.00 Kuwait, Riyadh and I am comfortable with the English language.
Click OK to login to the OWA Mailbox
Figure: 15
Right now I don’t have any mail in my inbox so I am composing a mail and sending to user shareef and administrator subject as DAG Replication Test.
Figure: 16
Figure: 17
You can see from the below screenshot that the user shareef is received the mail subjected as DAG Replication Test
Figure: 18
Now I am shutting down the MBX01 mailbox server, MBX01 is holding the DB01 database.
The below mentioned screenshot you can see that the DAG database DAG_DB copy status on MBX01 is showing ServiceDown
Figure: 19
The DB01 database copy status is also showing ServiceDown
Figure: 20
This is the screenshot of the DAG network, in that the MBX01 server network interface IP address (192.168.1.161) is showing unavailable.
Also the status of the MBX01 node in Failover Cluster is showing Down
Figure: 21
Figure: 22
This is the status of the network adapter in Cluster network and it is showing Unavailable.
Figure: 23
Now we are confirmed that the Mailbox Server MBX01 is completely down, that means the database DB01 is also down. In this situation I can’t login to the administrator mailbox, it has to give an error when I try to login to the administrator mailbox.
I am going to login to OWA with the username administrator
Figure: 24
As I am login first time with the administrator user ID, I have to choose the Language and Time zone.
Click OK to login to the administrator mailbox
Figure: 25
This is the error we will get when the mailbox database is down or the server itself down. The error shows that the administrator mailbox is unavailable that means the database where the administrator mailbox is down.
We confirm that the administrator mailbox is not working we need to find out the whether the mailbox for user shareef is available or not.
Figure: 26
This is the mailboxes of both shareef and administrator. In this we can see the mailbox for shareef is available and accessible without any issue.
Through this we identified that DAG failover is working perfectly.
Figure: 27