[Your Solutions] Modify Exchange 2007 SmartHost Configuration

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Sean Kearney (Toronto, Ontario)

Exchange 2007

Sean Kearney is our Friday Funnies guest blogger but he has a serious side too!  This is a great tip on how to change the default port and SmartHost in Exchange 2007.  This might come in handy for those trying to host an Exchange 2007 server behind a residential ISP connection.

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I almost forgot about this until I started playing with Exchange 2007 again. You can't specify a non standard port (as far as I can tell) in the Gui interface for Exchange 2007 for a Smart Host. You could in Exchange 2003 / 2000 / 5.5.

 

Turns out you need to dip into the powershell and specify the port command to add a non standard one.

 

new-SendConnector -Name 'SMTP-SmartHost' -Usage 'Internet' -AddressSpaces 'smtp:*;1' -DNSRoutingEnabled $false -SmartHosts 'fqdn.mailrelay.tld' -port 2525 -SmartHostAuthMechanism 'None' -UseExternalDNSServersEnabled $false -SourceTransportServers 'EXCHANGE_SERVERNAME'

 

This allows Exchange 2007 to spit mail out to my SmartHost fqdn.mailrelay.tld on port 2525.

 

(Sample slipped out from the VHD!)

 

For the big guys with REAL ip addresses, probably a non issue. But Small Businesses having a real IP address and hosting setup is expensive.  But nowadays most ISPs like to force you to only use their own Smart Host (which can be bad if port 25 is plugged by spam blasts in the ISP).  

 

A provider we use consistently without fail is pair.com which offers a smart host (only if you have validated to them within a 10 minute period). It will run on port 25 (blocked by most ISPs). Or it will run on 2525 (not blocked). I've found a few other smart hosts that offered this for the same reason.

 

It was a little irritating to not just go "Click" and change the port. But also a little interesting to find out the how...