Microsoft Exchange Advice - Two Sites

[limok]

Hi,

We currently have two exchange 2010 servers in two different sites (uk and china). The uk server acts as a relay server for incoming mail and sends intended emails to their recipients. The problem that we have is that our vpn link between the two servers is not very good on some occasions (caused by great firewall of china!) causing emails to be held in a queue before getting to their destination - sometimes dropping connections because of packet losses.

We also find emails that are sent from China intended for Chinese recipients are first sent to the uk then to China, obviously causing more delays. We have one domain (one mail exhanger) and don't want to split off to another domain for China. We want email addresses to be under one domain name.

So the question i have is what are our options?

Any advice from you guys will be welcomed.

Thanks!

[jamieakers]

Yes we have we have all that on both sites. When I say China emails mean external emails that are sent to our Chinese users. internal emails between Chinese users works fine.

 

We don't mind paying for the service or routing (depending on what's actually going on) if it makes services run better. Can you tell me more about upstream MX hosts (we use messagelabs as our smart host)

 

Cheers,

 

That makes more sense.. sorry I read from your first post that Chinese user emails were being routed via UK.

 

I'm surprised MessageLabs don't provide this service in all honesty.  Mimecast for example do provide this service (note: this was the first I found, I don't have personal experience of using them) discussed in detail here: http://kb.mimecast.com/Email_Gateway_and_Security/Email_Gateway_Administration/Gateway_Policies/Delivery_Routing/Delivery_Routing_Policy.  They'll even queue it for up to 4 days on their systems for you.  The article implies you can set the routing up using specific destination email addresses, which looks like exactly what you're after.

[jamieakers]

I'm presuming you have at least a CAS, Hub Transport, Mailbox Database server and Domain Controller at each site?

 

If so - first of all you've got a connector issue between your 2 servers - email that is from user that has their mailbox on the China server to a recipient with their mailbox on the China server should never leave China.

 

Separately you're looking to have MX records pointing to 2 different offices and the right one being used depending on the recipient - this isn't technically possible.  You could instead have the MX record pointing to an upstream MX host who then distributes to China/UK depending on recipient information?  You're then making the queuing their problem instead of yours, but this would be a paid-for service and I don't know whether your company would be averse to a third party routing the email beforehand.

[limok]

I'm presuming you have at least a CAS, Hub Transport, Mailbox Database server and Domain Controller at each site?

 

If so - first of all you've got a connector issue between your 2 servers - email that is from user that has their mailbox on the China server to a recipient with their mailbox on the China server should never leave China.

 

Separately you're looking to have MX records pointing to 2 different offices and the right one being used depending on the recipient - this isn't technically possible.  You could instead have the MX record pointing to an upstream MX host who then distributes to China/UK depending on recipient information?  You're then making the queuing their problem instead of yours, but this would be a paid-for service and I don't know whether your company would be averse to a third party routing the email beforehand.

 

Yes we have we have all that on both sites. When I say China emails mean external emails that are sent to our Chinese users. internal emails between Chinese users works fine.

 

We don't mind paying for the service or routing (depending on what's actually going on) if it makes services run better. Can you tell me more about upstream MX hosts (we use messagelabs as our smart host)

 

Cheers,

[limok]

That makes more sense.. sorry I read from your first post that Chinese user emails were being routed via UK.

 

I'm surprised MessageLabs don't provide this service in all honesty.  Mimecast for example do provide this service (note: this was the first I found, I don't have personal experience of using them) discussed in detail here: http://kb.mimecast.com/Email_Gateway_and_Security/Email_Gateway_Administration/Gateway_Policies/Delivery_Routing/Delivery_Routing_Policy.  They'll even queue it for up to 4 days on their systems for you.  The article implies you can set the routing up using specific destination email addresses, which looks like exactly what you're after.

 

Excellent I'll have a look into this. (it was wither mimecast or messagelabs when renewing our smarthost a few months back - I think I'm going to regret the choice made!)

 

Thanks mate.

[deni88]

VPN's are important. You can find better and safer vpn on the web for free. Try to have a new one, maybe it could help.

[sc302 Veteran]

consolidate to 1 site, having multiple exchange databases and cas servers for redundancy and fail over.  Utilize outlook anywhere and owa for china either through the vpn or through the internet (remaining encrypted and secure regardless of medium used, vpn goes down it wouldn't matter).  This would in turn create your own private cloud and deliver mail provided that the users have access. If you have a lot of users in china and a small amount of bandwidth, jamieakers solution may be better. 

[limok]

consolidate to 1 site, having multiple exchange databases and cas servers for redundancy and fail over.  Utilize outlook anywhere and owa for china either through the vpn or through the internet (remaining encrypted and secure regardless of medium used, vpn goes down it wouldn't matter).  This would in turn create your own private cloud and deliver mail provided that the users have access. If you have a lot of users in china and a small amount of bandwidth, jamieakers solution may be better. 

 

This is sort of what we have at the moment. the problem is limited bandwidth and the latency between our two offices plus the fact that the Chinese government filter all sorts of network traffic. We utilise outlook anywhere for users in China connecting to our China exchange server and given the current bandwidth outlook anywhere won't work between uk and china.

 

jamieakers solution is probably the best one and it turns out Messagelabs allows named routes for a set amount of email address to be created.

[+John Teacake MVC]

VPN's are important. You can find better and safer vpn on the web for free. Try to have a new one, maybe it could help.

 

Why are VPN's important? That is a very generic bold statement to make. I would like to hear your reasoning behind that. 

 

I presume you are commenting from a Joe User POV here. It sounds like this person's needs are different. 

 

And your saying try a new one as if its as easy as that, It might be for Joe User. And one that gets round the Great Firewall of China can be a right PITA.