Thanks for the response!
You've gotten me interested in a second machine.
How about a setup like this:
Primary IMail box for web messaging pop3 etc. with all the accounts (we use
internal db).
Secondary box that acts as gateway for sending mail and spooling for our
customers that have their own mail server. Or even some virtual domains that
don't require web messaging.
Is this the best way to lighten the load and still keep things centralized?
Scott Phelps
NT Admin. Customer Service
+=====================+
WebKorner Internet Services
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.webkorner.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Len Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] Peering Questions
> Peering means that both servers share the same MX priority level for
> incoming mail only, but only one of the two (or ten ) servers has any
> specific mail account. Any peer server will accept the mail, and then
> forward to the correct peer using the SMTY VRFY command (has to be
> enabled). This does give a backup mail server / redundancy aspet, also,
>
> Peering has no advantage on heavy-lifting of outgoing mail, POP3, or Web
> Messaging, all of which have to be handled by the specific Imail server
> that holds a specific Imail account.
>
> The real nasty work of SMTP job is not receiving mail, but in sending it.
> Imail has to spawn an SMTP process, which then looks up the destination ip
> in DNS, wait for that to come back, tries to contact the mail destination,
> if unreachable, it retries with secondary mail destination, if fails,
> queues the mail for later attempt, etc, etc. if reachable, it shakes
> hands, blah, blah, delivers the mail, all at typically erratic internet
speeds.
>
> To offload all of that outgoing grunt work to another machine, use the
> Imail "deliver through a gateway", where the gateway is at best on the
same
> local subnet, and you give the gateway's ip address so Imail doesn't have
> to do DNS lookups to find the gateway's ip address. Imail drops the mail
on
> the outgoing gateway ip address quickly and reliably, gets back to work
the
> more user-reactive tasks such as POP/IMAP and Web messaging sessions.
>
> Len
>
> =====================
>
> >Can anyone out there explain the relationship between 2 peered IMail
> >servers? how much load balancing can they accomplish or does the second
> >server just handle the occasional overflows and downtimes via a secondary
> >MX?
>
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> to be removed from this list.
>
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