Accepted Domain and Remote Domain in Exchange Server 2013

In this part, we will have a look on the Accepted Domains and Remote Domains in Exchange Server 2013. So what are Accepted Domain and Remote Domain?

Accepted Domain:

An Accepted Domain name is any SMTP namespace that your organization used to send and receive emails. Also the Accepted Domain includes the domains that are authoritative domain, internal relay or external relay domain.

Authoritative Domain – It is the SMTP name space that is used by your Exchange Organization to send\receive emails

Internal Relay Domain – When an Exchange Organization is sharing the same address space with 3^rd party messaging or other exchange organization, the you need to create a internal relay domain, and you have to configure a Send Connector in Mailbox Server as the source with address space matches to the internal relay domain.

For example: If your company (A) and your partner company (B) is sharing the same SMTP namespace as @Chennai.com and your domain is authoritative to receive emails for Chennai.com. If an email sent for the user rajkumar@chennai.com first received by A and if the user mailbox is not there, then the email will be route to B organization using Send Connector

External Relay Domain - When you configure an external relay domain, messages are relayed to an email server that's outside your Exchange organization and outside the organization's network perimeter

By default the active directory domain name will be created as the default accepted domain for the Exchange Organization

How to create a new Accepted Domain in Exchange Server 2013

To create a new Accepted domain, login to Exchange Control Panel -> Mail Flow -> Accepted Domain and Click New (+) -> Give a Name -> type the accepted domain name -> Choose the Type of Accepted Domain and Click Save

Remote Domain:

Remote Domains are configured to control the settings of message transfer between your Exchange Organization and the remote domains. We control the settings like Message Format, Automatic Replies and NDR using the Remote domains

By default, a Remote Domain with * which includes all domains will be created and the creation of new remote domains and the configurations can be only done via Exchange Management Shell and not using Exchange Admin Center. Below are the configurable parameters using Set-RemoteDomain

Receive Connectors in Exchange Server 2013

Receive Connectors are the connectors that are responsible to handle inbound emails to receive emails both from internal and external domains. Servers having the Transport Roles should have Receive connectors to receive emails from Client or other servers or from external network.

With the architecture changes in Exchange Server 2013, both the Server Roles are having the Transport components where Mailbox Server role has the Hub Transport component and the Client Access Server role has the Front end Transport Component and both the server roles will have a receive connectors

Send connectors are organization specific, where the settings are applied globally but the receive connector are server based and below shows the default Receive Connectors in Exchange Server 2013 and their responsibilities

Default connectors created in Mailbox Server Role

"Default Chennai-EX-01" is the connector created in Mailbox server role which accepts connection from Mailbox Servers and from Exchange 2010 Edge Transport Servers

"Client Proxy Chennai-EX-01" will accept connection from Front End Servers (Client Access Server)

Default Connectors created in Client Access Server Role

"Default Frontend Chennai-EX-01" accepts connection form all SMTP sender using port 25, message enters to the organization using this connectors

"Outbound Proxy Frontend Chennai-EX-01" accepts messages from the send connector on a Mailbox Server with Front end proxy enabled. By default newly created Send Connectors will not be enabled with Front end proxy option and if we need we need to enable this option on respective send connector

"Client Frontend Chennai-EX-01" Accepts secure connections with TLS applied

Note: To find whether the connector is associated to Mailbox Server role or Client Access Server role, we have to check the Transport Role option, where the HubTransport refers the connector is associated with Mailbox Server Role and the FrontEndTransport refers that connector is associated with the Client Access Server Role

How to create a Relay Connector in Exchange Server 2013

If we want to create a new Receive Connector in Exchange Server 2013, login to Exchange Control Panel -> Mailbox Flow -> Receive Connectors and Click New (+)

Enter a name and Select the Role as Hub Transport, and on the Type select Custom to create Relay connector to accept emails from Scanner or Printer in Exchange Server 2013

Note: Role option is used to specify whether to create the receive connector related to mailbox server or client access server and below are the types of receive connectors and their functions, based the type of receive connector selection the required type of authentication and the permission will be assigned to that connector

For more information about the Permission – Click here

For more information about the authentication – Click here

On the Network Adapter Bindings page, check All available IPv4 are added and click next to continue

On the Remote Network Settings, remove all IP address and add the Printer or Scanner or the application IP address and click Finish

Note: By default all the internal Receive Connectors are set to receive 35 MB of emails, based on your requirement modify this limit

Send Connectors in Exchange Server 2013

We will discuss about Send Connectors options and how to configure Send Connector in Exchange Server 2013. Like Exchange 2007 & 2010, Send Connectors in Exchange Server 2010 is to route the internal emails to internet\external domain. We can configure Send Connectors to route external emails using two options

1. Route the emails to a Smart Host or
   
2. Configure DNS to route emails to external domain
   

By default, there won't be any Send Connector created to send emails to external domain. We have to configure the Send Connectors manually to send emails to external domains.

To Create a Send Connector in Exchange Server 2013 -> Open Exchange Control Panel -> Mail Flow -> Send Connectors -> Click New (+)

New Send Connector option allow you to create any of the 4 types Send Connectors as shown below, type a name and select the connector which you want to create and click next

• Custom Send Connector – Create this Send Connectors to send email from Exchange 2013 to Other Non-Exchange Servers
  
• Internal – to send intranet mail
  
• Internet – to send emails to internet\external domain
  
• Partner – route mail to trusted 3^rd party servers
  

On the next page we have the option to select whether to route the external emails via DNS or Smart host. Select the respective option and click next

To route emails via DNS, select "MX record associated with recipient domain" and

To Route emails via smart host, select "Route mail through smart hosts" and you have to specify the smart host IP address

Next option is to select the Address Space. Using Address Space, we are configuring the send to route emails only to allowed emails domain. For example, if we want to route emails only to yahoo\gmail, we have to create a address space with yahoo.com and gmail.com and to route emails to all external domain, create a address space with * as shown below

Next option is to set the source servers which are going to use this send connectors, select the mailbox server and click Finish

Below shows the completion of New Send Connector creation in Exchange Server 2013. By default the new send will allow max of emails with the size of 10 MB, we can modify this as per company's requirement.

Below shows the output of Send connector and it will help you to have a look on the configurable parameters that are available in Exchange Server 20103, you can use all those parameters when using Set-Sendconnector