Backup mail server using an offsite server with a second MX record.

[Paul Lago]

I am not sure how I can approach this issue. I need to have a redundant
backup smtp server for my domain just in case my main server, its internet
connection and/or power goes down to accept incoming emails to my domain. I
can make the appropraite MX and A record settings but am confused on how to
properly set up the replication between the two servers. Conversly, does
anyone know of a SMTP queing server software I can run that will accept any
and all SMTP mail and hold until it can verify that the main SMTP server has
been brought back online and forward the messages to it? Don't know how to
correctly solve this problem. Although I think Microsoft has an amazing
knowledge base for many many issues, this is one I think they left out.

Help. Please!!!

Thanks in advance for any and all help,
Paul

[William Lefkovics]

Can't your ISP do this for you? Ours does.

Alternatively, I have had multiple IMS's connected to an Exchange
organisation using 2 different internet connections for redundancy. One
connection an ISDN, the second a wireless connection to our ISP. You could
disconnect either and email would still flow.

Hpwever, our ISP and Exchange have proven both so stable that the second one
was not really money well spent.

William Lefkovics, MCSE, A+

"Paul Lago" <pl...@sentry-systems.com> wrote in message
news:e6F03vp...@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com...

[William Lefkovics]

Oh, and I do believe the ettiquette is to not cross post between newsgroups.

(I bet there's an RFC somewhere that says that, right?)

William

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

Note: It's best to separate your IMS from your mailboxes if your site is of
any significant size so that problems with the IMS don't affect mailbox
access.

Set up two Exchange servers in your site on some cheap desktop-class
machine. Any cast-off machine that's reasonably fast (say 200MHz or faster,
although I've run IMSes on slower machines and they've worked fine) and has
enough memory (say 128MB, though I've run them on less) will work. Ensure
that there's a DNS A record for each machine. Create an MX record for each
of your domains that points to each machine, i.e., two MX records for each
domain, with equal cost. (One domain equals two MX records.) If one
machine goes down, the other will pick up all inbound traffic. Note that
this will not give you complete redundancy for outbound mail, however, as a
failure in the IMS could result in mail being queued up in the failed
server's MTA until you've fixed the IMS on that machine. But it'll work
pretty well for you other than that.
--
Ed Crowley MCSE+Internet MVP-Exchange
Protecting the world from PSTs and Bricked Backups!
Exchange FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm