How to Configure Authoritative Domains on the Edge Transport Server Role

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

This topic explains how to use the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell to configure authoritative domains for the Edge Transport server in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. An Exchange organization is authoritative when it handles mail delivery for recipients in the accepted domain. You configure an authoritative domain by creating an accepted domain and setting the accepted domain type as authoritative.

Accepted domains are any Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) namespace for which the Edge Transport server sends and receives e-mail. An Edge Transport server may send and receive e-mail for more than one SMTP domain. Accepted domains include those domains for which the Exchange organization is authoritative. An Exchange organization is authoritative when it handles mail delivery for recipients in the accepted domain. Accepted domains also include domains for which the Exchange organization receives mail and then relays to an e-mail server that is outside the Exchange organization for delivery to the recipient. The Edge Transport servers should always accept e-mail that is addressed to any of the organization's authoritative domains.

Before You Begin

Accepted domains are configured for the Exchange organization and on computers that have the Edge Transport server role installed. We recommend that you configure accepted domains only on the Hub Transport server role and then create an Edge Subscription for the Edge Transport server. The accepted domain configuration will be replicated to the Edge Transport servers when the EdgeSync service runs. For more information, see Subscribing the Edge Transport Server to the Exchange Organization.

To perform the following procedures on a computer that has the Edge Transport server role installed, you must log on by using an account that is a member of the local Administrators group on that computer.

Procedure

To use the Exchange Management Console to create an authoritative domain

1. Open the Exchange Management Console.

2. In the work pane, click the Accepted Domains tab.

3. In the action pane, click New Accepted Domain…. The New Accepted Domain wizard appears.

4. On the New Accepted Domain page, complete the following fields:

   • Name   Use this field to identify the accepted domain in the user interface. You can type any name that you want. We recommend that you select a meaningful name that helps you easily identify the purpose of this accepted domain. For example, you may want to use a name that identifies this as a subsidiary domain or as a hosted domain. You must use a unique name for each accepted domain.

   • Accepted Domain   Use this field to identify the SMTP namespace for which the Exchange organization will accept e-mail messages. You can use a wildcard character to accept messages for a domain and all its subdomains. For example, you can type *.contoso.com to set Contoso.com and all its subdomains as accepted domains.

     After you complete these fields on the New Accepted Domain page, select the following option to create an authoritative domain: Authoritative Domain. E-mail is delivered to a recipient in this Exchange organization.

5. Click New.

6. On the Completion page, click Finish.

To use the Exchange Management Shell to create an authoritative domain

• Run the following command:

  New-AcceptedDomain -Name "Contoso" -DomainName contoso.com -DomainType Authoritative
  

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-AcceptedDomain. After you configure the accepted domain, you must verify that a public Domain Name System (DNS) mail exchange (MX) resource record for that SMTP namespace exists and that the MX resource record references a server name and a public IP address that is associated with the Exchange organization.

For More Information

For more information about how to configure accepted domains, see the following topics:

• Managing Accepted Domains

• How to Change an Accepted Domain Type

• How to Remove an Accepted Domain