OpsMgr 2007: Email notification to external email address fails with error 31500

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We've seen this problem crop up a few times here recently so I thought a heads-up was in order.  Hopefully if you use external email addresses in your notifications you haven't run into this issue but if you have this may be a solution:

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Problem:   If you're using System Center Operations Manager 2007 and have configured an email notification recipient that uses an external (public) email address, the notifications may fail to that recipient with the error below:

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Event Type: Error
Event Source: Health Service Modules
Event Category: Notification
Event ID: 31500
Description: The following address(es) specified as notification recipient(s) are invalid:
   Protocol: Smtp
   Recipient type: Unknown
   Address(es): <user@externaldomain.com>

One or more workflows were affected by this. 

Workflow name: Subscription4a147e11_6e39_4354_8b79_7b0584fde4d7
Instance name: Alert Notification Subscription Server
Instance ID: {E07E3FAB-53BC-BC14-1634-5A6E949F9230}
Management group: 

For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

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Note that the same notification subscription works fine if used with email address which is internal and part of the Active Directory (AD) domain.

Cause: The SMTP Server in the organization is configured with relay restrictions.

Resolution: Configure the servers SMTP Relay restriction configuration to add the IP address of the OpsMgr server that is sending the email notification.

Milan Jajal | Manageability Support Engineer