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tosneyp_93777's avatar
tosneyp_93777
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jun 23, 2011

Exchange 2010 SMTP Virtual Server Forward to smarthost

Hi,

 

 

I'm new to this forum and also new to the wonderful World of F5 - so please go easy on me should I ask anything stupidily obvious! ;)

 

 

The reason I'm posting is to see if anyone has an idea how I can forward smtp traffic to a smarthost (say cluster.email.com)? I've setup a virtual server listening on port 25 and also set a pool up that includes the servers I want to be able to send/receive smtp traffic...i've also set the send connector on those servers to point at the VIP...but how can I get the VIP, which is listening on Port 25, to send the smtp traffic on to cluster.email.com? The reason I want to set this up is so I can install one SSL certificate on the VIP that can be used for all the exchange boxes etc...

 

 

Any help would be appreciated as I'm no F5 guru to say the least....exchange i'm not too bad with though! ;)

 

 

Cheers,

 

Pete

 

microsoft
partner

13 Replies

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  • Michael_Koyfma1's avatar
    Michael_Koyfma1
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Jun 23, 2011
    I am a bit confused - why are you pointing your send connectors to the VIP? Shouldn't they explicitly be pointed to Cluster.emal.com(which I assume does not resolve to your VIP and does not reside on your Hub/Edge servers?
  • tosneyp_93777's avatar
    tosneyp_93777
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 23, 2011
    Thanks for the reponse first of all!!

     

     

    Secondly.....the idea was to be able to point our 3 Hub Transport servers at the VIP, then the VIP would forward traffic to our email service provider (cluster.email.com etc)...this way we would only need to install one SSL certificate on the F5 for all the smtp traffic generated too/from our 3 Hub Transport servers! Does that make more sense to you now?
  • Michael_Koyfma1's avatar
    Michael_Koyfma1
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Jun 23, 2011
    Maybe a diagram would help. I am not sure I see the value or reason to provide a VIP on F5 for cloud.email.com - that name does not live in your environment/namespace - so how it come into play? You configure each Hub server to send external mail via cloud.email.com host - and that host IP lives in the cloud - so why intercept that traffic at the LTM level? I am probably missing some piece of info here....
  • tosneyp_93777's avatar
    tosneyp_93777
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 24, 2011
    The value would be to reduce the amount of SSL certificates required for our hub transport servers....from 3 to 1 SSL certificate. I agree that the name (cloud.email.com) does not live in our namespace, hence the reason I want to forward traffic to that names space(which out of interest is the fqdn of the exchange cluster that our email service provider uses to route email through)! I believe a simple irule to forward any traffic received by the SMTP VIP would do the trick, but I'm no good with irules! :( If a diagram would be better then I can always provide one, should I email you direct?

     

     

    PS - thanks again for the assistance/response.
  • Michael_Koyfma1's avatar
    Michael_Koyfma1
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Jun 24, 2011
    But if your hub servers are sending outbound SMTP connections to email.cloud.com, then they are not using SSL certs hosted on them, right - email.cloud.com provides its own SSL cert and you don't have access to it, right?
  • tosneyp_93777's avatar
    tosneyp_93777
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 24, 2011
    no mate The HUB servers are sending outbound traffic to the Vip(172.30.1.1) and then I just want the VIP to forward that traffic to our Email Service Provider(cluster.messagelabs.com or cloud.email.com)...so the SSL certificate will be installed on the VIP...but regardless of the SSL certificates or my exchange setup - I just want an IRule forward traffic to a FQDN..surely thats possible? :)
  • JRahm's avatar
    JRahm
    Icon for Admin rankAdmin
    Jun 24, 2011
    Yes, that's possible. Check out the RESOLV::lookup command in the wiki: http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/RESOLV__lookup.html Click Here
  • tosneyp_93777's avatar
    tosneyp_93777
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 25, 2011
    no its not mate, the SMTP VIP is "mail.ourcompany.com" and the FQDN of the exchange cluster which i want to forward smtp traffic to is cluster.messagelabs.com :)