Relay VM Message to Email Not Working After Changing Smart Host to Use Gmail Relay FQDN

[marc.kessler]

Good Morning,

We are are in the process of switching email providers over to Gmail for our school.  In Cisco Unity Connection Administration (v10.x), when the Smart Host under SMTP Configuration is set to the IP address of our old mail server, the relaying of voicemail messages to email addresses works perfectly.  Once I change the Smart Host to smtp-relay.gmail.com, the relaying of vm messages stops working.  However, if I use an IP address that points to smtp-relay.gmail.com (108.177.12.28) instead of the fully qualified name (FQDN), the relaying of vm message works successfully through Google.

Since we want to use the FQDN of smtp-relay.gmail.com instead of an IP address which could change, I am trying to figure out why Cisco Unity Connection cannot resolve smtp-relay.gmail.com and what to change so that this FQDN can be resolved and so that vm messages can be relayed to email addresses properly once again.

Thanks,

Marc

[Brandon Buffin · Accepted solution]

Sounds like CUC cannot resolve the name via DNS. Possibly does not have a DNS server configured? See the following link for steps to setup a DNS server via CUC CLI.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/9x/upgrade/guide/9xcucrugx/9xcucrug070.html

Brandon

[marc.kessler]

Thank you for your response, Brandon.  I was actually looking for the CLI command to show the current DNS settings before changing them.  However, I could not find such a command that I could run before changing the DNS settings just in case I need to revert back to those settings.  Do you know if there is a way to tell if there is a primary or secondary DNS server already configured?  I would hate to override any settings that are already in DNS.     Thanks, Marc

[Brandon Buffin · Accepted solution]

Marc,
You can use the command "show network eth0".

Brandon

[marc.kessler]

Brandon,

I just wanted to let you know that after configuring the dns servers and the domain name, I was able to use the fqdn as the Smart Host (instead of an ip address) and now vm messages are being relayed to our new Gmail server as intended.  I was able to ignore the license warning that was concerning me because we are on Unity 10.x.

Thank you again for all your assistance.  It is greatly appreciated.

Marc

[marc.kessler]

Hi Brandon,

You are correct.  I ran the command you suggested and it shows that the DNS is not configured.  From the documentation, it looks like I just need to enter the command set network dns 8.8.8.8 (or alternative ip address).  I don't think I need to configure any of the dns options.

I will try it out on Monday and then let you know how it goes.  Thanks again for your help!

-Marc