How to Fix When Backup Exec Email Notifications Fail

How to fix when a Backup Exec email notifications will not send to outside email addresses

We had already created a receive connector in Exchange for our copiers, scanners, etc., and had hoped to simply add the Backup Exec server to the list of allowed IPs but in typical BE fashion, things are never easy and their support portal is useless.

 

Here is our fix for when Backup Exec’s Email Notifications do not get sent

 

So, the first thing I did was run SGMON.exe from C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\

I checked off the top 2 boxes in the Capture selection windows (Job Engine, Backup Exec Server) and then started capturing to see what was happening.

I did a test of the email notification and then checked SGMON and I saw an error that said “Mailbox unavailable. The server response was: 5.7.1 Unable to Relay”

After some digging and a Google-a-thon, it was discovered that you need a very specific receive connector in your Exchange Server (or Office 365 Mail Server) when sending email notifications to outside email addresses.

The mail connector that you are routing your notifications through has to have ONLY ‘Externally Secured ( IPSEC )’, ‘Exchange servers’ and ‘Anonymous Users’ checked in order to relay.

The problem with that is that when you check Externally secured you get an error that you cannot also have TLS checked.  Which means we could not use our existing relay connector nor SMTP port 25 any more, we had to create a custom port and custom Exchange receive connector

 

How to Fix when Backup Exec Email Notifications do not work when sending to external email addresses using your EXCHANGE SERVER

 

1. In Backup Exec, go to Configuration and Settings – Alerts and notifications – Email and Text notification
2. Enter the hostname of your mail server and change the port number to anything other than 25 or 587
3. Now login to Exchange or Office 365
4. Create a new custom inbound frontend connector
5. Name it whatever you want and click next
6. Remove port 25 and replace it with whatever port you choose from step 3, click next
7. Remove the default range and add the IP address of the Backup Exec server click Finish
8. Make sure to go into your Windows firewall and add that port as an allowed inbound rule on your exchange server

 

The Backup Exec Server should now be able to relay backup notifications to outside email addresses but if it doesn’t, keep SGMON running and try again to see what new errors you get

 

How to Fix when Backup Exec Email Notifications will not route through your OFFICE 365 Hosted Exchange email system

 

1. In Backup Exec, go to Configuration and Settings – Alerts and notifications – Email and Text notification
2. Enter your Office 365 MX record, which you can get from your O365 domain portal of find using MXToolbox
3. Set the port to 25
4. Now login to Office 365 – Admin -Exchange Admin Center
5. Now go to Mail Flow – Connectors
6. Create a new custom connector From ‘your mail server‘ to ‘Office 365‘ – Name it ‘Email Relay’ and then choose the ‘Verify by IP Address‘ option and enter the WAN IP of your Backup Exec Server (google ‘what is my IP’ while on your BE server to get this if you don’t already know it)
7. Once the new mail connector is saved, you should be able to route your email alerts and notifications through Office 365
8. If it doesn’t work, run a telnet command to your MX record on port 25 and if you dont get a response, than your mail connector is setup wrong or you have the wrong WAN IP