We have 1 server with Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 at our place of
business. I have setup the DNS to make this server the Primary Server.
I would like to setup a Secondary Exchange Server in a different
location and a different domain. I have setup the DNS to reflect this
change. What I need to know is how to setup the Secondary Exchange
Server to catch all the mail when the Primary Server goes offline and
when it comes online it will notify the Secondary Server to deliver
the mail.

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Request for Question Clarification by cerebrate-ga on 18 Jan 2003 00:57 PST

Dear attrabeutz-ga,

This shouldn't be too difficult, but I'll need a little background
information to determine how exactly you want to do this.

First and most significantly, you say you're setting up the two
Exchange Servers in separate domains. Are these two domains part of
the same Active Directory forest/Exchange Organisation, or separate?

Secondly, in the latter case, will the secondary server also be
collecting mail for its own domain, or is its only purpose to back up
the primary server?

Thanks,

cerebrate-ga

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Clarification of Question by attrabeutz-ga on 18 Jan 2003 09:28 PST

Cerebrate

Both servers are a part of 2 separate Active Directory and not in the
same forest.

Yes the second server is collecting mail for its own domain, and I
want this server to be a backup server as well.

Thanks

Dear attrabeutz-ga,

To implement this, you need to create an SMTP connector in the domain
which you wish to act as the backup. To illustrate, I'll use the
example of two domains "main.com" - the domain containing the primary
Exchange server - and "backup.com" - the domain containing the backup
Exchange server.

In Exchange System Manager, on the Exchange server for backup.com, go
to the "Connectors" section, and select "New SMTP Connector..." from
the context menu.

On the "General" tab of the properties for the new connector, enter a
suitable name for the connector, such as "Backup MX for backup.com".
Select the "Forward all mail to smart hosts" option, and enter the
Internet-visible DNS name, or IP address, of the Exchange server for
"main.com".

Add the SMTP virtual servers on the "backup.com" Exchange server to
the "Local bridgeheads" list on this page.

On the "Address Space" tab, add the name of the domain that the
Exchange server will be relaying for, in this example "backup.com".

Check the "Allow messages to be relayed to these domains" check box on
this tab.

Click OK.

At this point, you have created a connector to allow the "backup.com"
Exchange server to relay mail through to "main.com". You can test this
by telnetting directly to the smtp service on the "backup.com"
Exchange server and attempting to send a message to a "main.com"
address. (This is a special exception to the normal no-relay
configuration, created by the connector, so you needn't be concerned
about spammers potentially taking advantage of this setting.)

To make it act as a backup server for cases when the "main.com"
Exchange server is down, you need to update the MX records for
"main.com" to include an additional record pointing at the
"backup.com" Exchange server, with a higher priority. This will cause
servers sending mail for main.com to use the backup server when the
primary server is not available.

The records should look something like this:

main.com.     IN  MX  10  mail.main.com.
main.com.     IN  MX  20  mail.backup.com.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't queue all the mail on the backup
server until the primary comes back online and notifies it - this
isn't the standard way of handling mail server outages and isn't
supported by Exchange itself. Rather, it queues up the mail for the
primary server on the backup and tries to send at at intervals until
the primary server comes back on-line.

These intervals are set in the configuration for the SMTP virtual
servers on the "backup.com" Exchange server which the connector uses.
If the standard intervals don't suffice, although they should for most
normal configurations, you have the option of creating an additional
SMTP virtual server on "backup.com" for the use of this SMTP
connector.

If this answer isn't quite what you're looking for, please feel free
to request a clarification.   
    
Hope this helps,    
    
cerebrate-ga

Search Strategy:

Personal knowledge as systems admin.

Very good answer. Tested it and everything seemed to work just fine.
Checked the logs and saw that it was receiving mail from the test
site.

Tried to email from the backup.com domain to the main.com domain and
received this error...

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      'tom@main.com' on 1/18/2003 9:44 PM
            A configuration error in the e-mail system caused the
message to bounce between two servers or to be forwarded between two
recipients.  Contact your administrator.
            <server.backup.com #5.3.5>
but I can live with that.
Thank You