In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to create a new internet send connector in Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2016 so you can send email out to the internet.
Introduction
When the first Exchange 2013 server is installed into an organization, there is no send connector which means that your email that is sent out from your organization to an internet recipient is not sent. Outlook reports that the email was sent but it is in fact in the queue on Exchange.
You need to set up a send connector to be able to send email to the internet.
Creating a Send Connector
When creating a Send Connector, you need to ensure that the account you are using has the correct permissions. To create a Send Connector, the account you are using must be assigned the “Organization Management” role.
You can create a send connector through the Exchange Admin Center or through the Exchange Management shell using PowerShell. Below I’ll demonstrate how to create the same send connector using both methods.
How to create a Send Connector using the Exchange Admin Center
1) Open the Exchange Admin Center.
In this example, we have a single Exchange server called litex01 and are using the name space mail.litwareinc.com. We then open the URL https://mail.litwareinc.com/ecp as below.
2) Click on mail flow in the left pane then click on send connectors
3) Click the + icon, enter a name for the Send Connector and select Internet then click next
4) Here you can select whether you will send email through a smarthost or directly to the internet.
Sending email through a smart host prevents your Exchange server connecting to the recipient email servers directly and provides a layer of protection for Exchange. It also allows you to put the smarthost in a DMZ and do additional outbound mail filtering. If not adding a smarthost, then just click next. If you want to add a smarthost, click on route mail through smart hosts click on the + icon and add one then click next as below.
5) On the next page, you’ll be prompted for the address space
This is the domain name that you will use the send connector for. It’s possible to set up a send connector that will only send email to a particular domain. This is useful if you need to set up special routes for different domains. In our case, we need to set up just a standard route for all internet email so we specify an address space of *. See below:
Click on next when done.
6) On the next page, click you need to select the source server.
The source server or servers is a list of servers that will be allowed to use the send connector configuration to send out email to the domain you have specified, in our case all domains (*).
Click the + icon to add a server, select your server, click add then click on ok
7) Now you should see your send connector listed and can test sending email to the internet
How to create a Send Connector using the Exchange Management Shell
1) Create a send connector using the New-SendConnector cmdlet
Run the below command on a single line in the Exchange Management Shell to create a new send connector for the address space *, with a name of “Internet Send Connector” and for use by the transport server LITEX01.
New-SendConnector -Name “Internet Send Connector” -AddressSpaces * -SourceTransportServers litex01 -FrontendProxyEnabled:$true
You may notice the -FronendProxyEnabled parameter is set to True. This means that Exchange will actually proxy outbound emails through the CAS server to the internet. I consider this to be preferable because it means that incoming and outgoing mail routes are symmetrical which helps with troubleshooting. Enabling the frontend proxy is not a default setting.
If you want to create the same send connector but also specify a smart host then run the command below. Here I’ve specified two send connectors, mail1.outbound.litwareinc.com and mail2.outbound.litwareinc.com:
New-SendConnector -Name “Internet Send Connector” -AddressSpaces * -SourceTransportServers litex01 -FrontendProxyEnabled:$true -SmartHosts mail1.outbound.litwareinc.com,mail2.outbound.litwareinc.com
Conclusion
In this post, we’ve looked at how to create a Send Connector, specify what domains it will send email to, whether it will use the CAS server to proxy the email and also whether we’ll relay email through a smart host.
In an upcoming post I’ll run through the troubleshooting steps which you should go through should you have issues sending email out to the internet.