Wasn't it chris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> who once said: >>How do I get the secondary to pick up the mail when the primary is down? > > If you setup the MX records correctly, this should be done by the sending > server. It will look at the MX records and try sending to the server with > the lowest value, if it doesn't accept the mail, it will move up the MX > records in order of the value until a server takes the mail (or it runs > out of records to try). > > So if setup correctly, it should basically be transparent to you. Okay, simple enough, I reckon.
> >How do I get the clients to obtain their mail from the secondary when the > >primary is down? > > They don't. They get their mail from the primary. The secondary just acts > as a mail relay to the primary. So when the secondary takes the mail, it > just tries repeatedly to send the mail on to the primary with the plan > that the primary will come back online and accept the mail before the max > number of attempts is reached. > > So while the primary is down, your clients can't check their mail. If you > need redunancy like that, then I can't help you with setting up SIMS for > that. > > > So to set it up, the first step is to assign the MX records. You would > set your primary server with a lower value than your secondary. So the MX > record should be something like this > > primary.domain.com MX 10 ###.###.###.### > secondary.domain.com MX 30 ###.###.###.### > > > Then in the seconday server's router put the following > > doamin.com = domain.com.smtp How does this tell the secondary to "forward" the mail to the primary? In my case, my primary is "bigbrother.pecandeluxe.com". It's first router entry is "pecandeluxe.com=bigbrother.pecandeluxe.com". Let's say I call my secondary "littlebrother.pecandeluxe.com". It also will need the entry, "pecandeluxe.com=bigbrother.pecandeluxe.com", right? And then will it also need, "pecandeluxe.com=pecandeluxe.com.smtp"? See, this is where I get confused. Now, do I set up NO (zero, zip, nada) mail accounts on the secondary? Aside from the default "Postmaster" account, that is. > And set the number of retries (in the SMTP settings) to something high > (figure on your duration to retry * number of retries will tell you how > long it will continue to attempt to send the mail before giving up... my > old ISP was REALLY unreliable so I have mine set to 30 minutes between > retries with 250 attempts before stopping, so it will retry for 125 hours > or roughly 5 days before giving up). Ahhh, good. That makes it clearer for me. I'd prefer my users to be able to check their mail, but so long as I can keep the mail from "bouncing", I'm good. Not to bore you with details, but my SIMS machine was mysteriously "locking-up" overnight for several nights running. The next day I was getting phone calls from people that their mail had bounced. I was even getting this (SIMS) list warning that my mail had bounced (once I got the server back up, that is). The server is more stable now, but I wanted to prevent these problems in the future. If you or someone else can just clarify the router stuff for me, I think I'm in business. Thanks! ================================================ | Doug Starkey | | Network Administrator | | Pecan Deluxe Candy Company | | 2570 Lone Star Drive | | Dallas, TX 75212-6308 | | e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | voice: 214-631-3669 Ext. 108 | | fax: 214-631-5833 | ================================================ ############################################################# This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
