Question

How to setup a backup mx/mail server?

Asked by: warrenrapson

Hi all,

I have an Exchange server (SBS 2008) and I want to setup a backup email service so that email will continue to be received elsewhere in the event of my server being down.

- My website is hosted and I use cpanel to administer it.
- I have an mx record that points mydomain.com to mail.mydomain.com

Can I set up a lower priority mx record to point mydomain.com to itself? I assume so, but:
- what happens to the user accounts that I have on my server, do I have to replicate the accounts on my webmail or is a catch all ok?
- can I setup some kind of queue so that the email will be forwarded to my exchange server when it becomes available. If yes, how? cron?

Thanks,

Warren

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Asked On
2009-06-13 at 23:57:56ID24489978
Tags

mx

,

email

,

cpanel

Topics

CPanel

,

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
12

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Answers

 

by: efg-uaePosted on 2009-06-14 at 01:08:14ID: 24622289

Hi

You need to setup one More Server in the Same Active Directory. so that All users are available to both Exchange Servers.

You need 2 Mx Records. with different IPs. One MX record with higher priority to your current server. and other mx will point to your backup server.

When one mail server will be down. Email will be automatically routed to other mail server.

You can also achieve this goal by clustring.

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/high-availability-recovery/deploying-exchange-2007-sp1-ccr-cluster-windows-server-2008-failover-cluster-part1.html

Regards,

 

by: warrenrapsonPosted on 2009-06-14 at 03:06:48ID: 24622604

Hi thanks for that, but my second server is my linux based web site using cpanel...

 

by: efg-uaePosted on 2009-06-14 at 04:42:34ID: 24622937

which email server you are using on the linux server?

 

by: shauncroucherPosted on 2009-06-14 at 05:49:36ID: 24623242

Warren,

The cPanel will allow you to create DNS 'MX' records so you can publish where your mail servers can be found. That's easy enough.

The second task is the ensure that you have a secondary mail server that is able to accept mail for your domain and then store it until your primary email server is available.

Consider if you want a backup server in case of a connectivity issue / telecommunications problem or some building specific issue at your main office. If so, then you need your backup server to be located elsewhere. In this example there are plenty of email backup facilities out there that will accept (catch all) ALL mail and store it until your server is live again. Generally these systems will check whether your email server is accessible at specific time intervals.

The other option is for you to setup your own backup email server as efq-uas has suggested, and ensure that the server can accept inbound mail from anonymous users. This could be configured to store mail in queue and then deliver to your main email server post-disaster.

The other option which will protect against hardware failure on a single server is clustering. This will be more expensive to implement and may not assit if you have an internet connectivity issue?

It all depends what you are trying to protect against.

Shaun

 

by: efg-uaePosted on 2009-06-14 at 06:15:35ID: 24623352

Hi

Pofix is very good for you. It will behave as a backup email server. and when first server will be up it will forward all emails to it.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/postfix-backup-mx-server-anti-spam/

This article will help you a lot to configure it.

Thanks.

 

by: efg-uaePosted on 2009-06-14 at 06:16:02ID: 24623354

Sorry for Spell mistake ,,,PostFix...not potfix.

 

by: MesthaPosted on 2009-06-14 at 11:55:26ID: 24624681

Personally I am not a fan of backup MX solutions as I find they are spam magnet.
I wrote this blog posting a while time ago one why they were a bad idea and an alternative.

http://blog.sembee.co.uk/archive/2007/02/02/38.aspx

Simon.

 

by: lance_corporal_jonesPosted on 2009-06-21 at 06:57:36ID: 24677392

Hi Simon

When you say they are a spam magnet, would the domain get spammed more just for having a secondary MX record?
I have read your articles (great articles btw!) and you say the spammers would use the backup MX record to route their spam, however what if the main server has no spam protection in the first place, in this case the backup MX record shouldnt make spam worse right?, I'm thinking it would all end up going to the same server regardless of which MX record was used.

 

by: MesthaPosted on 2009-06-21 at 09:20:42ID: 24677797

The most effective way of dealing with spam is to drop it at the point of delivery. If the email has already been accepted and then you attempt to reject it, you are at best wasting bandwidth, at worst causing back scatter, depending on how your backup MX record server deals with the messages.

I am running a long term experiment with one of my clients, where we have two internet connections in use. The same antispam software is protecting both connections (Vamsoft ORF). There are two MX records. The second MX record gets approaching double the amount of spam sent to it that Vamsoft deals with.

You don't get more spam, it is just that more of the spam that is sent to your domain is sent via the second host. If the second server does not have the same level of protection - even something as basic as recipient validation, then your infrastructure has to deal with more spam.

Simon.

 

by: lance_corporal_jonesPosted on 2009-06-21 at 09:31:24ID: 24677819

I think I see what your saying, in my case I dont think it will make a difference however since the main server has no spam protection in the first place so spam coming in via different route is no worse then spam coming in on the main server.
All of our customers are SBS customers with no spam protection on the server, generally spam has not been much of an issue

Maybe mail relay services instead of backup mx is the answer, e.g. http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/relay.html as you only have one MX record pointing to dyndns server which relays it to you.

I'm trying to think of the best disaster plan, maybe the best way is to just setup a temporary IIS server to hold the mail and then once exchange is running to drop the mail in the pickup folder.

 

by: warrenrapsonPosted on 2009-06-21 at 17:05:19ID: 24679102

Hi all,

Thanks for all the contributions - they are all appreciated. I found this
http://forums.cpanel.net/f4/mx-smtp-forwarding-backup-59402.html
and I was going to try it, but then I came up with my own solution.

I now have a Google mail account with Google Apps the address me@mydomain.com; it's free for small groups and organisations. Google Apps also allows MX records to point to it therefore, when my server is down, my 'me@mydomain.com' mail will redirect to google. Now for the best bit - Windows SBS 2008 has a POP3 mail reciever that I've set up for each account that simply checks (at a specified interval) the google account and delivers to an Exchange account on the server. So if the server is down, Google will get the mail. When the server is back up, it will retrieve what it missed from Google. It's perfect for my one server, 5 user small business.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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