Exchange Comm. and RPC vs. SMTP

[Chris Alm]

We have a situation where we have two MS Exchange 2003 servers that operate
within the same Active Directory root. We wish to force the exchange servers
to communicate with each other always via SMTP and not RPC. However, because
they see each other in the domain structure, I think they still try to talk
to each other via RPC, despite having set up SMTP connectors.

Does anyone know how to completely disable Exchange
communications via RPC or other ways to resolve the problem
above?


1. This is not an RPC over HTTP issue. Enabling or disabling RPC over HTTP
will not fix or address our problem.
2. We don't want to disable RPC altogether, since the servers still need to
talk to Active Directory. We only want to prevent Exchange from sending
emails to other Exchange servers via RPC (i.e., we want the Exchange servers
to only use SMTP). We are fine with the Exchange servers communicating with
the Active Directory server via RPC.
3. Assume that the Exchange servers are members of the same Active
Directory domain (each Exchange server is in their own forest off of a common
root) and on the same physical networks.

Essentially, we are wanting all inter-domain/inter-forest/inter-mailserver
emails to go through a mail
gateway appliance. The mail gateway appliance only works with SMTP. The
only way to force Exchange-to-Exchange emails to go through the gateway is to
send email via SMTP, but Exchange servers insist on sending it via RPC,
thereby bypassing the gateway appliance.

Thanks for any help.

[Mark Arnold [MVP]]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 06:47:05 -0800, Chris Alm
<ChrisAlm@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

We have a situation where we have two MS Exchange 2003 servers that operate
within the same Active Directory root. We wish to force the exchange servers
to communicate with each other always via SMTP and not RPC. However, because
they see each other in the domain structure, I think they still try to talk
to each other via RPC, despite having set up SMTP connectors.

Just try and stop the smtp service, that will convince you that
message transfer between Exchange 2000 servers is SMTP and only SMTP.

Does anyone know how to completely disable Exchange
communications via RPC or other ways to resolve the problem
above?

No need. Honestly.

1. This is not an RPC over HTTP issue. Enabling or disabling RPC over HTTP
will not fix or address our problem.

Yes, we see.

2. We don't want to disable RPC altogether, since the servers still need to
talk to Active Directory. We only want to prevent Exchange from sending
emails to other Exchange servers via RPC (i.e., we want the Exchange servers
to only use SMTP). We are fine with the Exchange servers communicating with
the Active Directory server via RPC.

Yes, we see.

3. Assume that the Exchange servers are members of the same Active
Directory domain (each Exchange server is in their own forest off of a common
root) and on the same physical networks.

Essentially, we are wanting all inter-domain/inter-forest/inter-mailserver
emails to go through a mail
gateway appliance. The mail gateway appliance only works with SMTP. The
only way to force Exchange-to-Exchange emails to go through the gateway is to
send email via SMTP, but Exchange servers insist on sending it via RPC,
thereby bypassing the gateway appliance.

What are you basing this on?

Thanks for any help.