MailScanner cluster setup

[William Burns]

David Jacobson wrote:

> Also, I am considering replacing our core mail servers and replacing
> them with clustered MailScanner solutions - the problem I have is that
> I need the quarantine directories to be the same on all servers and
> their mail boxes.  I have considered setting up an additional three
> MailScanner machines NFS mounting a Network storage device... however
> this comes back to the point of single failure if the Network storage
> device goes down.  Can anyone perhaps shed some insight on their
> clustering setups?


David:

I'm not sure what you mean by "core" mail servers, or (in this context)
"clustering".

I have 3 machines that I call mail "switches" (gateways), each of which
is running MailScanner.
These 3 machines forward mail to various other "mailbox" machines, so no
mail gets delivered locally on any of the mailscanner machines.

This setup works very well for me. since each mail switch is in a
different geographic location, A power outage, or any other "disaster"
scenario can't stop mail to my domain. (although users of an individual
mailbox might be affected)

You need the quarantine directories to be the same? Meaning that all
mailscanner machines must get their quarantine files into the same
directory?
I'm not sure why that is a requirement.
When users get notification of a quarantine, that notification comes
from the individual machine that the quarantine is sitting on.

If you really need your quarantined files to be on one machine, I'd
suggest setting up some kind of automated file transfer from the
mailscanner machines to some central file server. That way, if the
central file server goes down, the mailscanner machines will still
function. The only downside is that the quarantine transfers will be
delayed.

-Bill

-------------------------- MailScanner list ----------------------
To leave, send    leave mailscanner    to jiscmail at jiscmail.ac.uk
Before posting, please see the Most Asked Questions at
http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/     and the archives at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html