Ironport routing to two Exchange servers based on recipient

Doug Charboneau · ‎11-11-2014

Currently we have an Ironport C170 -> Exchange 2010. We are going to be upgrading to Exchange 2013. I would like to have both servers in production since the move will not be able to be done all at once. Is there a way to route mail for a specific Exchange server based on the recipient email address? (the domain name is not changing so it would have to be the specific recipient) Outgoing mail will use the smarthost and should not be an issue, but incoming needs to be routed to which ever Exchange server is holding the recipient box.

Doug Charboneau · ‎11-11-2014

I little more clarification on this too. If I move a box from the 2010 server to the 2013 server and mail is received by the Ironport and both servers are setup as receivers for the Ironport how will it know which server to send it to? Will it try both?

Ken Stieers · ‎11-11-2014

You don't have to set up both Exchange servers as recievers from the ESA, but you can. The Ironport just knows what smtp route to use for a domain. It won't try both (at least not in the way your're thinking). It doesn't and shouldn't care what mailbox server a specific mailbox is on.

Knowing which mail server a specific users mailbox is on is a feature of Exchange... you could have 50 or 500 mail servers and point your ironport at one of them and the mail will get delivered because Exchange (or Notes or Groupwise) knows where a specific mailbox lives.

How does Exchange know? Its all stored in AD...

Ken Stieers · ‎11-11-2014

You can, but that's really a waste of effort and angst.

Set up 2013, get flow between the two versions running, then just point incoming email to the 2013 box.

Yes you'll have an extra hop for people still on 2010, but that's not a big deal, and its going away as soon as you're done moving mailboxes.

rene.kockisch · ‎01-11-2018

You write it is possible, but how to do that? I want to send incoming mail to two different Mailserver. It is only for a test environment. For that I want to copy all incoming to second Mailserver.