Nicholas- Good points. However, we are looking for a service that simply accepts any mail that we aren't around to grab, and which then forwards to us when we are alive again (i.e., a store-and-forward service). As far as running two mail servers on our own (on a single VMWare server for example), that really reduces the value of having the backup MX in the first place. If we lose our VMWare server, router, or T1, what then?
--- Puryear Information Technology, LLC Baton Rouge, LA * 225-706-8414 http://www.puryear-it.com Author: "Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers" "Spam Fighting and Email Security in the 21st Century" Download your free copies: http://www.puryear-it.com/publications.htm Tuesday, September 26, 2006, 1:04:22 PM, you wrote: > The only thing that I can think of is how does the backup mail server > determine legitimite email addresses? Or does it accept the email for > anything in the domain, then attempts to deliver that to the main server? > Wouldn't this make it susceptible to email bounce attacks if someone manages > to deliver emails to the backup server to non-existant accounts in your > domain? I would guess one solution is to silently drop any bounced emails > coming through the backup mail server. > One possible suggestion I can give you is setting up your own "store and > forward" backup server. Especially if you have two IPs available to use. > You can help keep costs down by using VMWare Server (or even Xen, if you > want to stay open source) to consolidate several lower-priority/low-use > servers onto one physical server. Set up the backup mail server to > occaisionally retry forwarding the email to the main server for some amount > of time, and setup the main mail server to synchronize the lists of valid > email addresses (accounts and aliases), so it can refuse to deliver unknown > to addresses at the SMTP connection. Setup this server as a lower-priority > MX record in your DNS, and it should be good to go in case your main server > goes down. Granted, I haven't tried this yet, but it is one of my main > plans when I can get a second host up for my own domains, even if they are > just personal hobby sites. > -Nick > On 9/26/06, Dustin Puryear <dustin at puryear-it.com> wrote: >> >> As with many small companies, at times our mail server goes down >> (repairs, etc) and we end up getting deferred mail destined for us. >> That would be fine, but a lot of people (and automated processes) >> don't like getting the Delayed Delivery messages. >> >> To counter that, we are interested in a backup mail service. There are >> some offerings from companies that provide DNS service (e.g., >> zoneedit.com). There may be others. Does anyone have suggestions, >> comments, or criticisms about these services? >> >> We do around 1-2GB of mail a month, so we would like to keep costs >> down. >> >> Suggestions welcome! >> >> --- >> Puryear Information Technology, LLC >> Baton Rouge, LA * 225-706-8414 >> http://www.puryear-it.com >> >> Author: >> "Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers" >> "Spam Fighting and Email Security in the 21st Century" >> >> Download your free copies: >> http://www.puryear-it.com/publications.htm >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> General mailing list >> General at brlug.net >> http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net >>
