Not a dumb question at all.
That would appear to be the simplest way to set up a single/consolidated
outbound host (which did not occur to me). For alternative security, you
might set up a relay account and use smtp-auth with the relay. This
would be simpler and a little more efficient than using a VPN. If not
using a VPN, you could restrict connections to specific IPs for
additional security.
While this configuration is simple to implement and provides a single
outbound exit point, I'm not sure that it provides much of a solution to
the problem of "experiencing high queue". All of the submissions would
still travel through each of the 6 current servers. The only difference
is that, with presumably a fast network connection, the emails will make
a rapid exit to the smarthost (which isn't very "smart" without an
ability to authenticate accounts).
I think a better solution would be to make the smarthost able to
authenticate users, so that submissions can be made directly to the
smarthost, eliminating the need for these messages to hit the 6 existing
servers at all.
I think that centralizing all of the domains (and accounts) into a
single vpopmail database is in order here. This could be done with a
(virtual) authentication server, which would service all of the 6
existing servers (and future smarthost), replacing the 6 mysql instances
with a single mysql vpopmail database on the authentication server. If
you don't have a virtual platform to use to implement an authentication
(mysql) host, you could consolidate all of the vpopmail databases
together on the (future) smarthost outbound server. This could be done
initially, then changing submissions over to the smarthost should be a
simple DNS change (provided your users' clients use a separate DNS name
for submissions).
I'm liking this solution the more I think of it. Of course I could be
missing something. ;)
Anyone care to share thoughts about this?
Thanks.
--
-Eric 'shubes'
On 09/26/2013 09:24 PM, Bharath Chari wrote:
Let me start off with a rather dumb question.
Why can't these six servers be configured to use the 7th as a smarthost.
The seventh (out going smtp) would restrict incoming connections to the
ips of these 6 servers. Add the ip of the 7th to the spf dns record for
each of the domains and you are good to go.
I do this on occasion except i add one more layer for security. I create
a vpn between my servers and the smarthost. The smarthost listens only
on the private vpn interface and forwards via the public ip.
Bharath
Eric Shubert <[email protected]> wrote:
On 09/26/2013 06:25 PM, Fernando Endangan wrote:
Dear Everyone,
Has anyone tried setting up a separate SMTP server to manage
outgoing
traffic.
Let me draw this in your mind. I currently have 6 mail servers
with 300
domains hosted on each server averaging 20 email accounts per
domain and
using qmail but experiencing high queue due to outgoing smtp
connection
(no spams) all emails are legitimate. Majority of our clients are
freight forwarders, remittance, multimedia company, etc. Basically,
everyone maximizes the use of their email including attachments,
marketing ads, and several mail activity. What I am thinking is
to setup
a separate SMTP where all my 6 mail servers connect to send only
messages and not receive.
Is my setup possible? Anyone kind enough to provide
documentation of my
stated dilemma? I would appreciate any kind response from you qmail
experts.
Thanks in advance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's quite a good idea actually. My intention for the future of QMT is
to make separate role-oriented servers such as this (a submission
server), which will be easily combined with others to make up what we
presently know as QMT.
In order to do this, simply build a new (virtual) qmt host. You can omit
the packages you won't be needing such as squirrelmail, courier,
maildrop, etc.
Once you have the server built, modify the
/home/vpopmail/etc/vpopmail.mysql file to point to the host with your
mysql database, and ... oops. You have 6 of these, don't you? So it's
not going to be quite so easy.
I'm thinking that you might want to set up a vpopmail/mysql
database on
the submission server which contains account information for all of the
domains. You might be able to use mysql's replication feature to make
this database a secondary to all 6 of your existing vpopmail databases,
but I don't know if that's possible, or if you might run into any
clashing of keys between the databases. There shouldn't be, but I
haven't looked at that schema in a while.
I'm going to ask for other opinions at this point. Bharath, you here?
Anyone else have an idea about this? Please chime in. :)
Interesting project, Fernando. I hope we can help you out with it.
Mobile mail. Apologies for bad formatting and typos.
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