Changing Exchange 2003 host name used when sending e-mail out

As organizations are increasingly fighting against spam e-mail, technical settings in mail servers need to be tweaked to let e-mail flow. For example, some mail servers require the SMTP protocol EHLO/HELO greeting line to match the DNS reverse lookup name of the server's IP address.

Now, if you are running Windows Small Business Server 2003 domain and Exchange Serevr 2003 on it, chances are your default settings are not correct. That is, if you follow most suggestions regarding local domain names, you might name you internal SBS domain something like "company.local". If your server name is something like "sbs1", then the full computer name of your Exchange server will be "sbs1.company.local". Of course, this local name will not resolve globally on the Internet, and thus your Exchange server might not be able to send mail to such SMTP servers (domains). Symptoms are mails that forever stay in the mail queue, as the server on the other end simply drops the connection after an "invalid" EHLO/HELO greeting, and thus your poor Exchange server will keep on trying again and again.

Luckily, there's an easy remedy: simply change the name that Exchange server uses when greeting other servers. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Open the Exchange System Manager (ESM)
2. Go to Administrative Groups/Servers
3. Select your server, for example SBS1
4. Under Protocols, select SMTP
5. Click Properties of the Default SMTP Virtual Server
6. On the Delivery tab of the Properties window, click Advanced
7. Change the name under "Fully-qualified domain name" to something that resolves on the Internet

That should do it!