We set up a new server for a client that had a fire and almost lost everything. On account of the fire, the owner wanted to have a remote backup server at his home. It is up and running with Exchange 2007; the main office has SBS 2008, also with Exchange 2007. Everything seemed to be going okay, DFS replicates his files in real time, and I even had his Exchange logs replicating to the remote server (though they weren't truncating) via Standby Continuous Replication. Last weekend, we shut down the SBS because the power was scheduled to be out. When we restarted the SBS on Tuesday, some messages started being delayed, without any rhyme or reason. I finally discovered that some were randomly routed to the remote Exchange server, where they were stuck in the queue because I had not defined a way for them to be sent. After I did that, the queue was flushed and everything was delivered. However, the headers show that they actually were sent from the home IP address, not the one in the office. This could become a problem unless we use a static address at the house, which also has a different ISP from the office. (Using the same ISP at both locations is not an option.) What I need, though, is either a way to prevent any messages from being routed to the backup server (keeping in mind that I want to be able to activate Exchange on that server as quickly as possible in an emergency, and I need Exchange on the home server running to do SCR), or I need to be able to specify a smarthost only on that server. With differing ISP's, I can't use the same smarthost at both locations. I looked through the Exchange 2007 settings and did not see any obvious way to accomplish what I need. Any suggestions?

Use a smart host from an independent source would be the best solution here. Unless you are going to setup the second server correctly, with static IP address etc then you are going to have problems with that server being used anyway. Use a smart host that is not tied to any specific host, then you wouldn't have that problem. Depending on the provider you might still have to get a static IP address, unless they support authentication. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP. http://blog.sembee.co.uk , http://exbpa.com/