Using Exchange mail for R6 server

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Howdy! :slight_smile:

First of all, I’m not a very experienced Notes Admin person. I’m a developer at heart, and I won the Admin hat by default. Here’s what we used to have in place, and what we need to have currently in place:

BEFORE:

  • R5 server on NT

  • Netscape mail server

  • Proper connection documents in order to route mail thru the NS server

  • Worked well!

AFTER:

  • R6 server on Linux

  • same NS mail server

  • same connection documents

  • Worked well!

NEXT STEP:

  • Same R6 server on Linux

  • M$ Exchange server

  • Same configuration as NS mail server, except change of host names and IPs.

  • Doesn’t work at all either internally or externally! =8O

Please no “just use Notes mail” answers. It breaks my heart. ~8( We will soon be scrapping everything Domino in favor of M$ technologies, and there’s nothing I can do about it. My boss likes Domino much better as a product, but M$ has provided more interest and support for our company in the past 6 months than IBM has in 10 years. He sees .NET squishing Notes within the next few years.

I have no problem researching to find the problem, but I’m not sure where to start. Is there something extra to config in Domino? In Exchange? Any 3rd party needed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep sifting thru the Notes help and logs to see what is happening.

Thanks, in advance,

Steve in Montreal :wink:

“It hurts to be on the cutting edge.”

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Subject: Using Exchange mail for R6 server

Steve - sorry to hear about your predicament. Your boss, however, is making a poor comparison - Notes is not intended to compete with .NET, WebSphere is. Otherwise, it’s apples and oranges. And hey, if they want to write 100 lines of C# code to do what I can do in 5 lines of formula language, well, it’s your dollar.

And, of course, MS sales will bend over backward to get you to switch. See what they think about the TCO a year from now.

Anyway, are there other mitigating factors in that connection? SMTP is SMTP, so it shouldn’t make that much difference. I have a similar setup here (Domino runs most of our web servers, Exchange for e-mail), and we send mail from Domino to Exchange via SMTP all the time. However, we also go through a firewall and MailSweeper. When Exchange was installed, was other such software also installed?

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Subject: RE: Using Exchange mail for R6 server

Howdy!

I agree that Notes is much stronger than any comparable M$ product, and my boss agrees too. He’s tired of his dealings with IBM, and the market here keeps asking for M$ applications. According to our sales guys, this is a typical sales meeting with a web application I develop using Domino:

Sales: “Our product does blah! blah! blah!”

Client: “It looks terrific! It has all the features we need, and the cost is very good. It’s great that it can be tailor-made for us. What was used to build it?”

Sales: “Notes/Domino”.

Client: “Hmm… if you could make it using a M$ technology, we’ll buy it.”

After our sales guys heard this over and over, they convinced my boss to switch technologies. I’ve been using C#.NET and VB.NET for several months now, and it can’t compare to Notes/Domino languages. The .NET isn’t well tested or documented, and it’s not very easy to work with (although I like the Visual Studio .NET better than Domino Designer).

It’s out of my hands, but it’s a shame that IBM doesn’t push Domino. :frowning: I believe it is a much superior product as you do, but how can we truly push it if IBM won’t? Anyhoo…

We don’t go thru a firewall - it is all on the same network. To my knowledge, no other software like “MailSweeper” was installed, but I’ll check to make sure.

It works fairly well for internal mail, but not outgoing mail. In R5, we had connection documents setup to send mail to other SMTP servers. In R6, I’ve changed the server config settings to enable to use the Exchange server to send mail to internal addresses.

What settings do I need to change to send mail to the internet?

Thanks, in advance!

Steve in Montreal =8D

“Indecision is the key to flexibility.”

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Subject: RE: Using Exchange mail for R6 server

Yes, I feel your pain :slight_smile:

As for the mail routing - sounds like Exchange is returning an error code and is not relaying the mail. Can you check your settings on the Exchange side to make sure it is allowing your Domino server(s) to relay mail?

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Subject: Using Exchange mail for R6 server

Steve,

In the Domino configuration document - Router/SMTP - Basics - local internet domain smarthost - provide your Exchange server name (Exchange should accept connection from Domino too)- smart host is used … - enabled.

Set the Forwarding address field of each person’s documents to their Exchange Mail.

Now, any notes mail will be forwarded to Exchange.

Hope it helps.

Cheers

Sekar

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Subject: RE: Using Exchange mail for R6 server

Howdy! :wink:

Thanksabunch! It’s a great improvement. I followed the logs, and the Exchange server does send it. Fairly quickly too.

However, it doesn’t work for outbound messages. :frowning: I checked throughout the same config document, and under “Router/SMTP - Restrictions - SMTP Outbound”, there was a “*” in “Deny messages from the following Notes addresses to be sent to the Internet”. I removed it, and left it blank.

Will I still need the connection documents to the external SMTP servers? I also put the Exchange server name in the “Relay host for messages leaving the local internet domain” field, in the hopes that it would use the Exchange server to send mail to the outside world. This was the result in the logs when I tried it:

08/11/2004 05:01:08 PM Router: Error transferring message 007373D4 via SMTP to EXCHANGE.CONNECTALK.COM 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for address@hotmail.com

Any ideas?

Thanks again! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I don’t think it’s a train! :wink:

Steve in Montreal