How to suppress an unwanted external Autodiscover lookup?

Question

In a small network with Exchange 2007, when starting Outlook 2010 (and once in a while afterwards), users get a prompt to confirm that it's safe to get account configuration information from cpanelemaildiscovery.cpanel.net/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml (I could read in a couple of forums that there is a bug in cpanel, but that's beside the point.)

I'm puzzled because I can't find any autodiscover DNS entries anywhere, neither internally nor externally. The only hint is that we use an external hosting company for our website and for one single email address, which runs on cpanel. So I guess that Outlook makes an external DNS query to test all entries? It reates a lot of confusion for the users and frankly I'm not too happy that the external hosting company gets contacted by all our users.

How can I suppress this behavior?

Thanks

What does an [MX Toolbox](http://mxtoolbox.com/) lookup for your domain return? — ewwhite, Dec 26 '12 at 10:03
It lists the correct 3 MX adresses we use. Nothing pointing to cpanel.net. — chris, Dec 27 '12 at 06:15

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 30 '12 at 22:01

1

Your options are limited on a Hosted Exchange.

Having said that, you can test your Exchange Autodiscover services externally using ExRCA tool from Microsoft.

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Check exchane autodiscover.
Plugin your values. You can paste the ExRCA output here with return codes for further analysis. Please obfuscate your domain and other private data before posting in a public forum.

hth

answered Dec 30 '12 at 22:01

Sunny Chakraborty

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It's not a hosted exchange, I have full control over it. The test above fails everything (no autodiscover found), except for the DNS name resolution which is correct. – chris Dec 31 '12 at 07:30
What version of exchange are you running ? – Sunny Chakraborty Dec 31 '12 at 12:17
Can you run the following commands on exchange shell – Sunny Chakraborty Dec 31 '12 at 12:18
Get-autodiscovervirtualdirectory | fl and get-webservicesvirtualdirectory | fl – Sunny Chakraborty Dec 31 '12 at 12:19
It's 2007. I can run the 2 commands but the results are too large to be posted here. Anything in particular? I don't see any reference to cpanel.net or any other outside domains. – chris Jan 02 '13 at 06:42
Are the following fields populated when you run the 2 commands : InternalURL and ExternalURL ? – Sunny Chakraborty Jan 02 '13 at 20:06
The first command has the 2 fields blank. The second has just the InternalUrl, which points to https://mx.externaldomain.com/ews/exchange.asmx – chris Jan 03 '13 at 08:05

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 15 '13 at 05:05

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There is a very good chance that the actual Domain name is pointing to a web server that is using cpanel. If you don't provide the auto discovery records at the registrar level or in the cpanel account then you do get this message from the cpanel autodiscovery service. I have resolved this issue by creating an a record for autodiscovery pointing to the ip address of the exchange server.

answered Feb 15 '13 at 05:05

GeekBell

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Did you add that to the external DNS? – chris Apr 02 '13 at 01:25

How to suppress an unwanted external Autodiscover lookup?

2 Answers2