OT: Backup MX

[Jim Dickenson]

If you do that then everyone will need to check for email on both servers.
If there is any "glitch" with your primary then mail will go to your
secondary. Also much spam will end up there and unless you clear it out you
will have mailboxes full.

What I would do is think about putting in a second network card and have the
system be on both networks. This way you can use the DSL server as a gateway
to your real server and all email can still be delivered to your real
server.

Alternatively you could put a second network card in your primary server and
have it be both your primary and secondary.

-- 
Jim Dickenson
mailto:dickenson at cfmc.com

CfMC
http://www.cfmc.com/



> From: "Green, Rodney" <rgreen at trayerproducts.com>
> Reply-To: MailScanner discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
> Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 09:33:19 -0400
> To: MailScanner discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
> Subject: Re: OT: Backup MX
> 
> 
> 
> Green, Rodney wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Green, Rodney wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> We recently had a day of downtime for our Internet connection. We
>>> don't have a backup MX to queue mail while our  mail server is
>>> unreachable.
>>> 
>>> My question is this. If I were to get a DSL connection setup and
>>> connect a backup DNS server and backup MX server, would there be a way
>>> for users to access incoming mail that is queued on the backup MX?
>>> How is something like this normally handled? We rely on e-mail here and
>>> need some sort of backup plan if our main connection goes down.
>>> 
>>> Thanks for any suggestions.
>>> Rod
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Just to add a little more information.. I'm using postfix as our MTA
>> and of course MailScanner.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> Replying to my own post yet again. :-)
> 
> I think my answer is in how DNS and MX records work. I guess I was
> confused by the term "backup mx." It looks like I would need to setup a
> duplicate mail server on the DSL connection, with a different FQDN, of
> course, and set it up as a final destination for mail. Then in DNS I
> would set up that new server with a lower priority than the normal
> server. If the primary server is down mail should then be delivered to
> the server on the DSL connection and be accessible to the users with a
> simple configuration change. Does this sound correct?
> 
> -- 
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