SMTP Monitor Check

I have two gateways and a primary mail server behind them. The BigIP is set up as a virtual server to receive all e-mail and to send it to the two gateways. If they are both down, it sends it directly to the mail server. One of the more annoying problems is that every five seconds, I get the following messages in the mail.log on the mail server:

 

 

Oct 31 15:28:38 zeus sendmail[20491]: [ID 801593 mail.info] j9VNSci1020491: [xxx.xxx.xxx.251] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA-v4

 

Oct 31 15:28:39 zeus sendmail[20493]: [ID 801593 mail.info] j9VNSdt2020493: [xxx.xxx.xxx.250] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA-v4

 

 

This happens every five seconds and I know it's due to the health monitor on the pool. My question is, can I change the monitor to be a TCP connection and do something like a "telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 25" and look for a result of "220" from the servers which means SMTP is there? How do I get the TCP connection to connect to the different machines without supplying their individual IP addresses or will it do this automatically to port 25 through the "Alias Service Port"? The virtual server can only have a single monitor for the pool, correct?

 

 

There has to be a way to resolve this.

 

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

Brian