Exchange 2010 and Receive Connectors (Relaying)

I'll be the first to admit that I can be a total nub at times - which is why when I recently migrated a network and introduced a new exchange server I ran into a small problem.

On the previous server, clients were able to send email from their bespoke software directly to the server but they couldn't do this anymore.

I checked all the settings on the receive connectors and everything seemed fine - eventually I tracked the problem down to a power-shell command that needs to be run on the receive connector in question (thank you http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2010/management-administration/managing-relay-connectors-exchange-server-2007-2010-part2.html)

Get-ReceiveConnector <RelayName> | Add-ADPermission –User “NT Authority\Anonymous Logon” –ExtendedRights ms-Exch-SMTP-Accept-Any-Recipient,ms-exch-bypass-anti-spam

As a heads up, if you try and copy and paste the command off the website mentioned above there's a typo in it which will throw an error (look closely and there is a space between smtp- accept- which needs removing)

Back on track - I should now be able to send a mail.. but no, still coming up with unable to relay.

Eventually I read the most useful advice that I've EVER read when dealing with receive connectors..

Change the FQDN that the receive connector provides in response to HELO commands

Why so useful? Well, you can instantly see which connector you are connecting to and find out where the problem lies. Immediately, I could see that I was connecting to a default connector which has no purpose. So I disabled it and tried again - BOOM

And that is why i'm a nub.. it's so obvious and so brilliant!

PS. don't forget to restart the transport service when you make changes :)

Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 and Sage Accounts/Sage Line 50 2015 data service (SBS 2011)

Sage have released their yearly update, however this time around it seems that they've decided to make it more difficult to have your Sage data installed on a server instead of a local PC.

If you have Sage on a network share but no app installed on the server and you update it to 2015, then you may (will!) receive a warning message when you try to connect  that the "Sage Data Service" is not running on the target server.

Usually I don't have the Sage software installed on server - its just another access point that needs maintaining. Instead, the data just resides on a share.

So the fix is to install Sage on the server - but alas, Sage have decided that SBS 2011 is not worthy! If you try and install it from the auto-run app it says that you don't have a compatible system.. even though we all know its 2008 R2 in disguise.

The solution? For me it was a simple task of navigating to the install folder on the sage CD and then running "clientserversetup.exe" instead of trying to install it from the auto-run application.

One thing that may also help is SP1 - but then if you're running SBS 2011 and you don't have SP1 you need a bit of a slap anyway :)

Hope it helps someone.

Edit: It seems that if you can install Sage from the auto-run it actually gives you the option of just installing the "Data Service" instead of the whole application so it may be worth looking into that. But for my part, the above solution fixed it quickly for me.

Edit 2: I confirmed today that SP1 has nothing to do with this - its all down to running the executable instead of installing from the autorun