You are seeing this when trying to release a message from quarantine? 

What version?

This is a one appliance environment acting as both a Control Center and Scanner?

On the Control Center settings page what is your SMTP Host settings set to? 

Are you getting this error for all quarantined messages or this one in particular?

Kevin

You can try to check your front-end server if continously doing transaction logs.Are you using ms exchange as mail server or domino?

"Cannot release the message. It has either been released or was unable to contact the SMTP host." when trying to release an email from the Spam Quarantine

Symptoms:
When you try to release a message from the Spam Quarantine on the Symantec Brightmail Gateway you see:
"Cannot release the message. It has either been released or was unable to contact the SMTP host."

The domain that you are trying to release the message to is one of your local domains.

The local domain has a specific IP and port where mail should be sent

Cause:
By default, when a message is released from the spam quarantine it will use the non-local settings to relay the messages. Usually it fails when there are no internal MX records for your local domains because most of the times it will try to connect to the external records.

Solution:
Two solutions are available:

1) Using an internal MX records for your local domain(s):

Make sure you have an internal MX record available for your local domains by using an internal DNS server that has access to those records. To verify that the internal MX records are working properly:
a) Login in the scanner appliance using SSH as admin
b) Run nslookup -querytype=mx yourdomain.com
c) Make sure the host being returned has an internal IP.

2) Configuring the Control Center to relay quarantine, alerts and reports to your internal mail server

Login to the Control Center
Navigate to Administration -> Settings -> Control Center
In the SMTP Host tab choose "Define new host"
Enter the IP address of your internal mail server
Enter the Port of your internal mail server
Click Save

Thanks for the replies. Yes I get the same error all the time when I try to release something from the quarantine. No matter what rule that put it there. Yes, we do have Exchange for our mail. We have the latest version of Brightmail. Thsi started when we upgraded to version 7. And it's been like this since then. What I don't understand is why it works when mail don't get stuck because of some rule. Shoulnd we have the same problem with all mail? Now I'm going to try out your suggenstions. I'll be back with a report.

We're also having problems with releasing messages after they've been quarantined. They were blocked for violating a PCI compliance [premium content] and got the same error message when we try to release them. The local admins won't do the procedure that gilbert08 posted since they felt that it is not necessary. I need to tell them otherwise but don't know how.

What version?

Is this is a one appliance environment acting as both a Control Center and Scanner? If not can you describe the environment.

On the Control Center settings page what is your SMTP Host settings set to?

Kevin

Hi Kev, is this KB for local emails only? we are having the same errors but with a non-local email. our setup for non-local is to use mx.

   Hello,

   Has anyone tried one or both solutions posted by gilbert08 ?

   This problem is happening here.

   Thanks,
   Carlos Oliveira

We have one control center and four scanners, releasing broke after upgrade from v 7 to v 8.

I performed the procedure after being instructed to do so by Symantec tech support. It worked great.

   I applyed the procedure number 2 from gilbert08, and it worked !

   Thanks !
   Carlos Oliveira

But I think the best solution would be to have internal DNS with internal MX records, different from public MX records and to use solution #1.

This is because with solution #2 in place, you can release inbound mail from the quarantine just fine, however you cannot release outbound mail from the quarantine - when you release it, the Control Center releases it to your Exchange server (or whatever internal mail server you have), which then in turn sends it oubound via Brightmail gateway again, and it gets re-quarantined.