During the transition from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, I needed to change an IP-address of an Exchange 5.5 Server on Windows 2000. After changing the IP-Address of this server (source serve) I made sure the server could reach it’s directory replication server (destination server) in a different site.

After restarting the server the queue of the directory replication was filling up with messages, but the e-mails were normally sent. This event id was logged in the application log on the source server:

Event ID: 9318
Source: MSExchangeMTA
The description for Event ID ( 9318 ) in Source ( MSExchangeMTA ) could not be found. It contains the following insertion string(s):  5, 1722, 1722, 1722, SERVERNAME, BASE IL, MAIN BASE, 1, 500.

On the destination server I found the following error:

Event ID: 9322
Source: MSExchangeMTA
The description for Event ID ( 9322 ) in Source ( MSExchangeMTA ) could not be found. It contains the following insertion string(s):  18, 1722, 1722, 0, SERVERNAME, ncacn_ip_tcp:servername[2849], BASE IL, INCOMING RPC, 27, 507.

Solution

The MTA bind procedure depends on the resolution of the FQDN of the servers. Because the source could reach it’s destination, I tried the other way around. And indeed, the destination had no way back to the source server. After configuring the host file on the destination server (%systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) and entering the IP-address of the source server, I could ping the source server again. I restarted the Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer Agent service on the source and the queue’s were again empty.

For more information : XCON: RPC Error Messages 9318 and 9322 Are Logged After You Install Post-Exchange Server 5.5 SP3 or SP4 MTA