Trying to figure out a problem with my network here. It is a very odd setup that soon will be remedied, but in the mean time I continue to see a problem happening over and over. I will try to explain below changing the actual names of domains
and Exchange addresses.
Background:
- 2 forests, we will call them abc.org and xyz.org
- abc.org has domains 123.abc.org
- xyz.org has domains 456.xyz.org
Both domains were set up with individual Exchange organizations. The domains are 2 components of a larger organization that is merging. Currently each domain has its own Exchange organization, however both Exchange organizations are using the
same namespace (first.last@name.org) for their email addresses. People in 123.abc.org need to be able to e-mail people in 456.xyz.org and the reverse. A GAL sync was set up to import each domains GAL into each other, but the set up of the 2 seperate
organizations is extremely odd, and the tools used are bad. This means that the Syncs are never 100%, and there is no fixing that right now. They will eventually all be in the same forest and domain so they are not going to try to fix the Sync
issues.
Problem:
Users in 456.xyz.org (the domain that is eventually going away) randomly start having issues receiving mail from "External" sources, meaning anyone outside thier domain. After weeks of trouble shooting, we have figured out most of the issues
with Ironports, firewalls, and gateways, but the issue continues to randomly pop up. Most of the ones I see now, I realize that they do not have a contact card in 123.abc.org
Question:
Finally, my question... If users in 123.abc.org with the e-mail address first.last@name.org attempt to e-mail someone in 456.xyz.org that also uses that @name.org namespace, and the user they try to e-mail does NOT have a contact card in the 123.abc.org
exchange organization, does that e-mail ever leave the exchange organization?
Put another way: user John Smith (john.smith@name.org) in 123 tries to email John Doe (john.doe@name.org) in 456. Does John Smith's e-mail make it out of 123, or does the 123 Exchange environement say that john.doe@name.org does not exist
here, so the message is non-deliverable.
Please forgive me if this seems a rediculous question, I am by no means an exchange guy, I kind of got thrown into this and am trying to figure it out. I also know that there are more complexities to this than I am explaining here, I am mostly curious
to know if this is a rabbit hole I need to be going down, or if I need to be putting my troubleshooting efforts elsewhere.
Thanks in advance