WS2022 IIS SMTP Server doesn't find TLS cert

JRV 546 Reputation points
2022-12-22T22:34:13.807+00:00

We use an IIS SMTP server to relay emails from older scanners that don't support TLS to MS365 anonymous relay, which requires TLS. We're replacing an existing WS2012R2 server with SMTP with a new WS2022 server with the SMTP feature installed.

The WS2012R2 SMTP server finds its TLS cert. The WS2022 server does not.

We have a CNAME for the WS2022 server in internal DNS, 'relay.domain.net'.

We have a self-cert whose subject is 'relay.domain.net' in the Personal and Trusted Root CA's stores of Certificates.msc. When I open the cert, it shows, "You have a private key that corresponds to this certificate.", and Certificate Status is "This certificate is OK."

In the SMTP Virtual Server, Delivery-->Advanced-->Fully-qualified domain name is set to 'relay.domain.net', and Check DNS reports the name is valid.

Pretty sure that's all I've ever had to do to get the cert to be used by SMTP service on any other Windows Server in the past.

But here, I restarted the SMTP service--and for that matter, the server--and the Access tab still reports "TLS is not available without a certificate," and the Windows Service event log shows smtpsvc event 2001, "No usable TLS server certificate for SMTP virtual server instance '1' could be found. TLS will be disabled for this virtual-server." as the SMTP service starts.

Am I missing something? If not, is there a place I can kick it to make it work?

Internet Information Services
Windows Server Security
Windows Server Security
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Security: The precautions taken to guard against crime, attack, sabotage, espionage, or another threat.
1,856 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

2 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Lex Li (Microsoft) 5,662 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2023-01-08T16:49:29.7+00:00

    All Windows/IIS SMTP components became deprecated ever since Windows Server 2003 went end of life,

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/hh831568(v=ws.11)#smtp

    So, use search engines to see what alternatives (likely from third parties) you can migrate to.


  2. Andrew Bosch 0 Reputation points
    2024-11-04T21:20:52.7866667+00:00

    I know this is a post that is 2 years old now. You have encountered a bug in the MMC snap-in for IIS 6.0 that is used to manage the Microsoft SMTP Service. When the snap-in the SMTP FQDN (the one present in the Advanced Delivery settings), it does not look at the certificate's common name, it looks in the SAN (subject alternative name) list. The bug is that it looks only at the first entry of the SAN list, so if you have the FQDN at any position other than the first one, the snap-in won't find it.

    0 comments No comments

Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.