SMTP loadbalancing

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pano.boschung

July 16, 2015 12:14

Hello
I am using 2 Kemp Load balancers in front of an Exchange 2013 DAG. I configured a virtual service using the Kemp template "Exchange 2013 SMTP" with the two Exchange Servers a real Servers.
Then I set on of the Exchange Servers in maintenance mode. While this Server is in maintenance mode he is not accepting smtp traffic anymore.
Unfortunately Kemp does not recognize this state and still forwards emails to this Server. The result is, that these emails are hanging in the queue of the sending server.
How can I configure health checks for the transport server services?

Regards
Pano

Date Votes

2 comments

Barry Gleeson July 20, 2015 10:38

Hi Pano,
Unfortunately when in Maintenance Mode, the Exchange Server will still respond to SMTP Health Checks so the Loadmaster has no way to determine if the server is down. (For HTTPs services OWA ECP etc there are specific healthcheck URLS which allow maintenance mode to be detected.)

I believe in your case you will need to disable the SMTP Real Server on the Loadmaster when maintenance is being performed

Barry

pano.boschung July 20, 2015 11:19

Hi Barry
Thanks for your answer. I will do it as you suggested.

Regards
Pano