Cluster of MailScanners

[Richard D Alloway]

Or, you could use 1 MX record and have multiple A records for that 1 MX record.

I have 6 MailScanner machines and fairly evenly spread the load across them
this way (in semi-zonefile format):

mydomain.com    IN      MX      0       smtp-gateway.mydomain.com

smtp-gateway.mydomain.com       IN      A       192.168.0.1
smtp-gateway-1.mydomain.com     IN      A       192.168.0.1
smtp-gateway.mydomain.com       IN      A       192.168.0.2
smtp-gateway-2.mydomain.com     IN      A       192.168.0.2
smtp-gateway.mydomain.com       IN      A       192.168.0.3
smtp-gateway-3.mydomain.com     IN      A       192.168.0.3
smtp-gateway.mydomain.com       IN      A       192.168.0.4
smtp-gateway-4.mydomain.com     IN      A       192.168.0.4
smtp-gateway.mydomain.com       IN      A       192.168.0.5
smtp-gateway-5.mydomain.com     IN      A       192.168.0.5
smtp-gateway.mydomain.com       IN      A       192.168.0.6
smtp-gateway-6.mydomain.com     IN      A       192.168.0.6

In order to satisfy the forward/reverse lookups of some servers:

192.168.0.1     IN      PTR     smtp-gateway-1.mydomain.com
192.168.0.2     IN      PTR     smtp-gateway-2.mydomain.com
192.168.0.3     IN      PTR     smtp-gateway-3.mydomain.com
192.168.0.4     IN      PTR     smtp-gateway-4.mydomain.com
192.168.0.5     IN      PTR     smtp-gateway-5.mydomain.com
192.168.0.6     IN      PTR     smtp-gateway-6.mydomain.com

We have no problems and no complaints doing this this way.

-Richard D Alloway, Esq
  Chief Technical Officer
  Winbeam

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Pentland G. wrote:

> I would agree with Martin except to say that it doesn't guarantee an
> "even" spread of load.
>
> I have 3 MX hosts available to the world and one gets around 50% -> 60%
> of the load, with the other two each getting just over 20%, fortunately
> my hosts can handle it :-)
>
> It all depends how complicated you want to make your life.
>
> Gary
>
> Martin Hepworth wrote:
>> John
>>
>> normal way of doing this is to have mutliple MX records for the
>> domain with the same value. That way dns will round robin between the
>> computers and if one fails others will pick up the work load
>> automatically.
>>
>>
>> John Schmerold wrote:
>>> Has anyone tried following approach to configuring a cluster of
>>> MailScanner boxes? 1. Get an account at dyndns.org - They are good
>>> guys & don't ask for a bunch of money
>>> 2. Define your mx record to be mx1.dnsalias.net
>>> 3. Setup as many MailScanner boxes as your daily volume dictates
>>> (Let's say you're setting up 2 units)
>>> 4. On the hour, run ddclient on box #1, on the 1/2 hour run ddclient
>>>           on box #2 (see
>>> http://www.dyndns.org/support/clients/dyndns.html for info regarding
>>> ddclient) It seems to me that this should help the huge spam attacks
>>> people are seeing. Will this work, is there a better way?
>>>
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>>> (http://wiki.mailscanner.info/) and the archives
>>> (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html).
>>>
>>> Support MailScanner development - buy the book off the website!
>>
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