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Secondary MX record?

Hello all,

We have an onsite Exchange server that handles all or our mail. We have a single MX record in DNS that points to it. I want to have a backup mail server through our ISP in case something ever happens to our primary. Can i just create a secondary MX record with a lower priority for the backup mail server? How does that work....all email will still go to our primary mail server and when it becomes unavailable for whatever reason, all mail starts routing to the secondary mail server until the primary comes back online? Thanks in advance!

Ludovick Lagrevol

Not aas simple,
it's not automatic,

if your primary server is down (or reject the mail for antivirus reasons or antispam, or ...), the mail try to be delivered to the secondary MX.

you need to ask your ISP to do

Ludovick Lagrevol

.....

you need to ask your ISP to do this job (accepting your emails and relaying them when the primary server come back)

but most of them do this job without any problem.

Rant32

Any professional ISP can host a mail fall-back service for you. When your mail server is unreachable for X attempts, the remote mail hosts will deliver mail to the secondary MX instead of returning it as undeliverable.

How mail is delivered when your server is back up depends. Sometimes this is automatic (because the mail host tries to push mail after some delay) or you'll have to use ETRN to signal the secondary MX that you're back online.

So, ask your ISP if it offers mail fallback for your domain.

Note that fallback only applies when your server is unreachable; a rejection because of viruses, spam, incorrect addresses, etc. will not deliver mail to the fallback host and the message will be returned undeliverable.

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llefebure

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