Exchange Server Forums

What should MY MX records be?

Users viewing this topic: none

Logged in as: Guest

Printable Version

All Forums >> [Microsoft Exchange 2003] >> Exchange 2003 SBS >> What should MY MX records be?

Page: [1]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

Limited time MSExchange.org offer! -- 1.Sep.2008 1:00:00 PM

TechGenix and SolarWinds have partnered to provide free copies of SolarWinds Exchange Monitor to all visitors who join the MSExchange.org Forums. SolarWinds Exchange Monitor is a handy desktop dashboard that continuously monitors Microsoft Exchange to deliver real-time insight into Exchange services, mail queue sizes, and host server health. Learn more about Exchange Monitor and the free offer!

What should MY MX records be? - 19.Jul.2008 7:01:56 PM

dartists

Posts: 1
Joined: 19.Jul.2008
Status: offline

Hi. I just set up SBS 2003 with Exchange 2003. So far so good except I can't find in either the SBS or Exchange consoles the information to set my MX records. Let's say my ey external domain is rre.com. My forest is realrock.ent and my server name is just "server". I ran nslookup and it came back as my default server is server.realrock.ent. So then I tried at the prompt to do q-mx. It came back "can't find q=nx: nonexistent domain". What does all this mean?

With my ISP I have the static ip set to my static ip. And for the MX record I have the host, @, pointing to server.realrock.ent, but I still can't emails.

Can anyone help?

Post #: 1

Featured Links*

RE: What should MY MX records be? - 20.Jul.2008 1:19:48 AM

uemurad

Posts: 5571
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
Status: online

MX records are set wherever your public domain name is resolved. Typically that is either your ISP, the company through which you registered the domain name, or a hosting facility.

You need a DNS "A" record that associates your public IP address to a FQDN. This may be your Exchange server, or some other SMTP gateway.

Then you need a DNS "MX" record that associates the FQDN defined in the above "A" record to a priority.

You can check your MX record information using NSLookup.

You can test your SMTP connection using Telnet.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to dartists)

Post #: 2

RE: What should MY MX records be? - 20.Jul.2008 1:33:22 PM

uemurad

Posts: 5571
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
Status: online

Looking at the private information you sent to me, you've defined your MX record incorrectly. The FQDN (fully qualified domain name) named in your MX record also has to be publically resolvable (i.e. in the public DNS). In other words, it has to end with your .com domain name and not the Windows AD domain name you are using. That's because my mail system (and everyone else's) has no way to determine the actual IP address.

I don't like to display actual information in public posts, so when you see "<yourdomainname>" below, it actually means your registered domain name.

So, what you need is to create an "A" record within your domain space that associates a valid FQDN (something like mail.<yourdomainname>.com). That's because my server has to be able to query the public DNS and find it.

Your MX record would then point to that same FQDN.

I know this may be hard to understand as written, but it's the best I can do without using the actual domain name.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 3

RE: What should MY MX records be? - 6.Jan.2009 7:49:25 AM

lukebrynycz

Posts: 73
Joined: 7.Aug.2006
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: uemurad

MX records are set wherever your public domain name is resolved. Typically that is either your ISP, the company through which you registered the domain name, or a hosting facility.

You need a DNS "A" record that associates your public IP address to a FQDN. This may be your Exchange server, or some other SMTP gateway.

Then you need a DNS "MX" record that associates the FQDN defined in the above "A" record to a priority.

You can check your MX record information using NSLookup.

You can test your SMTP connection using Telnet.

Instead of doing this, can you simply just ignore the A record and just add an MX record point at the IP? I guess this would make things simpler for him.

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 4