Exchange Incoming Mail Routing

Question

Hi,
I want to test a scenario where currently I have 4 Physical Exchange 2010 servers (3 are in a DAG). They all have their own external IP addresses and can all receive and send mail. I would like to test the scenario where Only 1 of the servers is receiving
the mail although the "internet" can send to any of the 4, therefore I assume this is a network routing style issue, however is there anything in Exchange where I can send incoming mail to 1 server before it hits one of the other 3? Currently it
would appear any of the 4 receive mail at any time and it's all a little random.
I would be happy to keep outgoing as it is for the time being.
Background Info: I inherited a very patchy/ broken 2007-2010 upgrade 2 years ago and am just starting to sort out the minor irritations e.g. spam, certificate warnings and backups!
Thank You for any advice you can give.
regards,
Jonathan Ward

Answer 1

You could always try the telnet method. The e-mail doesn't have to come from outside your organization for you to test this, all you need is the ability to establish a SMTP session and complete a single transaction.
Try something like this:
==================
telnet <ip-address-of-server-1> 25
helo
mail from:<[email protected]>
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
data
from: [email protected]
to: [email protected]
subject: blah blah blah
Leave a blank line after the subject
quit
=====================
Or you can just drop a correctly formatted text file (with a ".eml" extension) into the pickup directory on any one of the machines.
--- Rich Matheisen MCSE&I, Exchange MVP