Overview:

I’ve come across this with customers a few times now & it can be a real head scratcher. However, the resolution is actually pretty simple.

Scenario:

Customer has multiple Exchange servers in the environment, or has just installed a 2nd Exchange server into the environment. Customer is able to send directly out & receive in from the internet just fine but is unable to send email to/through another internal Exchange server.

This issue may also manifest itself as intermittent delays in sending between internal Exchange servers.

In either scenario, messages will be seen queuing & if you run a “Get-Queue –Identity QueueID | Formal-List” you will see a “LastError” of “451 4.4.0 DNS query failed. The error was: SMTPSEND.DNS.NonExistentDomain; nonexistent domain”.

Resolution:

This issue can occur because the Properties of the Exchange Server’s NIC have an external DNS server listed in them. Removing the external DNS server/servers & leaving only internal (Microsoft DNS/Active Directory Domain Controllers in most customer environments) DNS Servers; followed by restarting the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service should resolve the issue.

Summary:

The Default Configuration of an Exchange Server is to use the local Network Adapter’s DNS settings for Transport Service lookups.

(FYI: You can alter this in Exchange 07/10 via EMS using the Set-TransportServer command or in EMC>Server Configuration>Hub Transport>Properties of Server. Or in Exchange 2013 via EMS using the Set-TransportService command or via EAC>Servers>Edit Server>DNS Lookups. Using any of these methods, you can have Exchange use a specific DNS Server.)

Because the default behavior is to use the local network adapter’s DNS settings, Exchange was finding itself using external DNS servers for name resolution. Now this seemed to work fine when it had to resolve external domains/recipients but a public DNS server would likely have no idea what your internal Exchange servers (i.e. Ex10.contoso.local) resolve to.The error we see is due to the DNS server responding, but it just not having the A record for the internal host that we require. If the DNS server you had configured didn’t exist or wasn’t reachable you would actually see slightly different behavior (like messages sitting in “Ready” status in their respective queues).

An Exchange server, or any Domain-joined server for that matter, should not have its NICs DNS settings set to an external/ISPs DNS server (even as secondary). Instead, they should be set to internal DNS servers which have all the necessary records to discover internal Exchange servers.

References

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825036

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124896(v=EXCHG.80).aspx

“The DNS server address that is configured on the IP properties should be the DNS server that is used to register Active Directory records.”

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997166(v=exchg.80).aspx

http://exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-2013-manually-configure-dns-lookups/

http://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/2013/03/25/exchange-2013-dns-stuck-messages/