Hi everyone. As far as I can see, I never received a response about my last question. However, I have a different question. I understand that a lot of you think a backup MX is not a good idea and i understand why you feel that way. My question is this... As a matter of best practices, if my primary, in-house mail server which is hosting 500 domains/10,000 users was offline for 24+ hours, would a backup MX not make sense in this scenario? Or if this is not the best solution, what is the alternative? Thanks.
On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 3:19 PM Linda Pagillo <[email protected]> wrote: > Thank you all for this valuable information and advice. I appreciate it. I > have been thinking a lot about this over the past few days. Currently we > have Backup MX servers (Windows-based) in place for a few of our > Windows-based mail servers and they have been working quite well. We really > don't have much of a problem with spam because Message Sniffer, > SpamAssassin for Windows, and a few other AS/AV programs we are using are > doing a really great job in keeping spam to a minimum. > > I was chatting with one of my colleagues about the advice that you guys > and the Postfix list members provided. A saw a few times during those posts > that MX backup servers are probably not a good idea in general and the > reasons all seem to be pointing to the spammer problem. Since this is the > case, I brought up the subject of anti-spam gateways since we use those as > well in our environment. In the event of a primary server outage, our > gateways spool the mail until the primary server becomes available again, > however, if the gateway had an outage or failure, we would be in the same > boat. The mail would be rejected/bounced. I'm aware that most commercial > gateways use a round-robin so that they can essentially be "always up", but > what about the smaller clients who run their own mail server from their > offices and cannot afford a good gateway solution? I think folks in that > situation would benefit from a backup MX. That is why we implement them for > a lot of our smaller clients. So far, so good. :) > > With that being said, besides the issues with spammers which we feel we > have a good handle on, are there any other reasons why a backup MX is still > not a good idea? > > Thanks again! > > On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 6:48 AM Gedalya via Exim-users <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On 4/8/20 4:33 AM, Andrew C Aitchison via Exim-users wrote: >> > >> > Exim does recipient callouts and cutthrough delivery. >> > Are either of these useful for an MX backup ? >> >> Callout caching can be potentially useful when the primary is down. Not a >> complete solution of course. >> >> >> -- >> ## List details at https://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users >> ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ >> ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/ >> > -- ## List details at https://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
