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Excluding GFI products from scanning certain emails

Author: Luis Fernandes

Answer

PROBLEM

In some situations, one may not want to scan emails coming from particular servers or applications.
 
An example of such a situation would be an application that needs to send email to an internal user, such as a monitoring application that sends emails to the Administrator if an error is detected. The application would send an email, but MailEssentials and the IIS/Exchange server will treat this as an inbound email. Such emails will be processed by GFI MailEssentials for Anti-Spam and may therefore be blocked.
 

ENVIRONMENT

  • GFI MailEssentials
  • All Supported Environments

SOLUTION

The following are procedures that need to be followed in order to create either a new SMTP virtual server if you are running on IIS or Exchange 2000/2003 or another receive connector if installed on an Exchange 2007 Server. Please use the procedures below:
 
A. IIS SMTP server running as a relay
  1. From the Start menu, access the Administrative Tools.
  2. Click on the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager icon.
  3. Right click on the server name, select New and select SMTP Virtual Server
  4. Enter a name for the new virtual server, Example: Second SMTP virtual server
  5. Select the IP Address from the list see Note xx2
  6. Specify the home directory. This should be different from the home directory used for the main SMTP Virtual server which by default is: <C:\Inetpub\mailroot>
  7. Enter a test domain name this should not be the same as your organization s domain.
  8. When finished with the wizard, right click the Domains node, click New, and then click Domain.
  9. Select Remote and click Next .
  10. Type the email domain in the Name box. Click Finish
  11. Right click on the new email domain and select Properties .
  12. From the General Tab , enable Allow incoming mail to be relayed to this domain . In the Route domain section, select Forward all mail to smart host , and insert the name or IP address of the internal mail server. If an IP address is used, it needs to be enclosed in square brackets. Click Ok when finished.
  13. Right click on the new SMTP virtual server and select Properties .
  14. From the General tab , click on the Advanced button. Configure the server to use a new IP address or port for it to listen for connections on.
  15. From the Access tab, it is recommended to restrict the IP addresses which can perform an SMTP connection to this server. Alternatively, you can disable anonymous connections to this SMTP Virtual server.
 
B. Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003
 
  1. Open Microsoft Exchange System Manager.
  2. Expand Administrative Groups .
  3. Select the required administrative group -> Servers .
  4. Click on the Server and Expand protocols.
  5. Right click on SMTP, select New and select SMTP Virtual Server
  6. Enter a name for the new virtual server, Example: Second SMTP virtual server
  7. Select the IP Address from the list see Note xx2
  8. Right click on the new SMTP virtual server and select Properties
  9. From the General tab , click on the Advanced button. Configure the server to use a new IP address or port for it to listen for connections on.
  10. From the Access tab, it is recommended to restrict the IP addresses which can perform an SMTP connection to this server. Alternatively, you can disable anonymous connections to this SMTP Virtual server

C. Microsoft Exchange 2007
  1. Open the Exchange Management Console -> Server configuration -> Hub Transport
  2. Right click on the Hub transport Server name from right hand pane and select New Receive Connector
  3. Enter a name for the new Receive Connector
  4. For the intended use select to use Internet
  5. Under the Local Network settings, click Add to either add an IP address or port which is different than the one used for other Receive Connectors.
  6. Enter an FQDN for the connector to use (Example: mail2.yourdomain.com), click Next
  7. Review the summary listed and confirm by clicking New and Finish
  8. You should now see a new connector under the Receive Connectors Section
  9. Now that the Exchange setup is done, browse to the MailEssentials installation folder. (default: C:\Program Files (x86)\GFI\MailEssentials\Data)
  10. Open the file connectorwhitelist.xml with notepad or a text editor of your choice
  11. Follow the commented section as instructions to enter the necessary details needed
  12. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service for the changes made to the file connectorwhitelist.xml to take effect.
  13. After creating the new SMTP virtual servers or receive connectors, you need to configure your application to send emails to the new IP address or port configured.

Notes:
  •  IIS supports multiple SMTP Virtual Servers only when it is used on a server operating system. Therefore, multiple IIS SMTP Virtual servers cannot therefore be configured on Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Windows XP.
  • Although the intention for this article is to white-list internal connections to the server, one may also use this for emails originating from the internet. When this is done, you may need to configure your firewall / router accordingly.
  • In a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 environment, the mail relay server in the DMZ can be a machine running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with the Edge Transport Server Role installed. This type of setup also uses transport agents and receive connectors, so the Exchange 2007 procedure applies.
 

CAUSE

End user may desire to exclude emails from scanning.
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