How to specify which IP address to use for an Exchange Send Connector

Friday, May 13, 2011
If you have multiple IP addresses on and Exchange 2010 Hub Transport server for the same network, Exchange will always use the preferred IP address for all outbound traffic and consequently, the send connector.

There may be times when you want Exchange to use another IP.  Maybe because you already have that IP address configured in your firewalls.  Unfortunately, you can't specify the IP address to use in Exchange for a send connector on Hub Transport servers, only Edge Transport servers.

You can, however, install a hotfix on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 servers which allows you to use netsh to disallow certain IPs to be used for outbound traffic.  The hotfix is required for all versions of Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM.  It is included in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Hotfix for Windows Server 2008 SP2: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975808
Hotfix for Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2386184/

Once the hotfix is installed, run the following command from an elevated CMD prompt:
Netsh int ipv4 add address <Interface Name> <IP address> skipassource=true
This will cause Windows to disallow the IP address on the specified NIC from being used for outbound network traffic.

2 comments:

  1. A useful update.
    Thanks Jeff

    ReplyDelete
  2. "only Edge Transport servers"
    Jeff, how can we specify the IP address to use for outbound traffic for Exchange on Edge Transport server on Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM with Forefront TMG 2010 on it? It is really the promblem for us and we can't solve it...
    Den

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment! It is my hope that you find the information here useful. Let others know if this post helped you out, or if you have a comment or further information.