Friday 20 March 2015

Unable to send email on a VM provide by Google Compute

If you are wondering why you are unable to send email via a virtual machijne deployed by Google Compute - specifically port 25 / SMTP - it is because Google have chosen to block outbound connections on port 25 from your VM - presumely in a fight to avoid / fight email spam.

Since I wanted to setup an instance of an Exchange CAS in Google's Cloud I was faced with a bit of pain in the backside. I could either proxy the requests through another host or a different platform or send them through a smarthost for delivery (which is actually what Google reccomends on the subject - https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/sending-mail)

I chose the latter option and went with a company called "Mandrill" - which offer a free plan that allows you to send upto 12,000 outbound emails per month (which is more than enough for my needs) and critically lets you connect to the smarthost on port 2525 (which google permits.)

http://mandrillapp.com

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