Forwarding domains

Currently the company's domain address is quite long. It's just used for email and RDP connections, no website. I want to register a short domain address to use so that we do not have to give out a long address to people. We have an exchange server. Can I just have a domain forward emails to another domain easily? Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

CNAME

Sure. I've done this a few times with postfix, not with exchange, but the concept is the same.

Have the MX record for the short domain point to the same place as the long domain ie: your current exchange setup (this assumes no external SPAM/AV filter service, if you have one, you need to contact them (or if there's a remote configuration interface) and tell them to accept mail for the new domain) then tell your exchange configuration that it's also supposed to accept mail for the short domain. You'll also need to add the short address for each person under "e-mail addresses".

Now google "<your exchange version> address rewrite" and follow the steps if you want the outbound messages re-written to the short domain name when they leave your exchange server.

edit: and no, just a CNAME won't do it except for RDP. Both http and e-mail need additional steps.

Yes you can. Most registrars now have a "domain forwarding" feature. Log into your domain manager..select the domain you want to forward....select "forward"...type in the name of the other domain you want it to forward to...done. It's an easy peasy wizard that takes...oh...10 seconds? Covers everything...www. mx, @, etc etc.

Go to exchange server...add new domain to default recipient policy...make it primary if you wish.

^ What he said. Adding an additional recipient domain is cake. What version of Exchange/SBS?

It's Exchange 2003 SP2. Should I have the registrar forward the short domain to the primary domain or use the MX record?

lathode said:

It's Exchange 2003 SP2. Should I have the registrar forward the short domain to the primary domain or use the MX record?

Click to expand...

It's your call...either can work...but IMO, unless you're going to do weird things with "shortdomain.com"....the simple, easy, takes 10 seconds to do....and IMO proper approach is "forwarding" done in the domain control panel at its registrar.

I just did a bunch of these a few weeks ago with a bunch of domains I registered for my wifes real estate biz...did a bunch of domains she wanted...had them all "forward" to her primary domain. So in any browser, you can type any of those "other" domains..and your browser automatically forwards to her primary domains website. Same with e-mail.

Thanks for the help. I registered the new domain and have it forwarded to the long domain. Then I'll follow these instructions for Exchange. Not as difficult as I thought it would be.

Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. It looks like the recipient policy takes care of the address rewriting, which is good. I would think you'd want your long domain addresses re-written to the short, so when people see mail from your users they'll see From:[email protected]. From what I can tell, the recipient policy does that for you. The return path isn't re-written, but nobody will look at it anyway.

The domain forwarding (DNAME record) is basically saying: get the MX, A, CNAME, etc records for the short domain from long domain instead. The advantage is you don't need to maintain separate dns zones unless you want the domains to provide different answers. Any changes to long domain are reflected on short domain.

To sanity check it, just do a nslookup -> set type=MX -> short domain and make sure it's the same host as the long domain.

I did the steps for the exchange manager, the new domain shows up under users' email list in AD but I'm not receiving emails on the new domain. Found another site, http://www.ehow.com/how_6519681_configure-names-one-exchange-server.html Do I need to do the DNS steps?

Doing the nslookup it's showing namehost.worldnic.com under responsible mail addr.

Yes, you have to set the DNS to point the new domain name at the server that is going to handle e-mail.

Example:

Shortname.com DNS
@ MX external.longdomainname.com

or

@ MX 123.45.67.89

This has to happen on your external DNS servers, and internal ones as well.

For the zone type under the new zone wizard do I want to store the zone in AD?

lathode said:

I did the steps for the exchange manager, the new domain shows up under users' email list in AD but I'm not receiving emails on the new domain. Found another site, http://www.ehow.com/how_6519681_configure-names-one-exchange-server.html Do I need to do the DNS steps?

Doing the nslookup it's showing namehost.worldnic.com under responsible mail addr.

Click to expand...

I just do the added recipient policy....have many servers out there answering e-mail for multiple domains...just the added recipient policy is all I do and they work great.
As with many things in the Windows world..there are often at least several different ways to accomplish the same goal.