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Create a Receive connector to receive email from a system not running Exchange

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Applies to: Exchange Server 2013

You may have a situation where you want to receive messages from a system not running Exchange. For instance, if you have a network appliance that performs policy checks and then routes messages to your Exchange server. We assume in this case that the appliance uses SMTP. If not, you should use a Foreign connector or a Delivery Agent connector.

Interested in scenarios where this procedure is used? See the following topics:

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

  • You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Receive connectors" entry in the Mail flow permissions topic.

  • See Deploy a new installation of Exchange 2013 if you are beginning your installation. After the installation you can use the steps in this topic to create your receive connector.

  • For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts in the Exchange admin center.

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at Exchange Server.

Use the EAC to Create a Receive Connector to Receive Messages from a Messaging Appliance

  1. In the EAC, navigate to Mail flow > Receive connectors. Click Add Add Icon. to create a Receive connector.

  2. On the New receive connector page, specify a name for the Receive connector and then select Hub Transport for the Role. In this case, you want your Mailbox server running the Transport service to receive messages from the appliance.

  3. Choose Custom for the type, since the Receive connector will receive mail from an appliance not running Microsoft Exchange Server 2013.

  4. For the Network adapter bindings, observe that All available IPV4 is listed in the IP addresses list. Click Next.

  5. For Remote network settings, click Remove Remove icon to remove 0.0.0.0-255.255.255.255 from the IP addresses list, since you want to specify that the connector accepts mail from a specific appliance. Click Add Add Icon to add a new IP address, and in the Add IP address window, add the IP address of your appliance. Click Save.

  6. Click the Finish button to create your connector.

Once you have created the Receive connector, it appears in the Receive connector list. If you would like to see an example of how to create a Receive connector with a cmdlet, see New-ReceiveConnector.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you have successfully created a Receive connector to receive messages from a messaging appliance, test that you can receive mail from the appliance. If you can receive mail, you know that the configuration worked successfully.

For more information

Create a Receive connector to receive email from the Internet