>Ok .. so here is what I need to do .. I need to run two mail servers
>with a MX of 10 and 20 for failover ..
That is easy. In DNS, have the MX records with preferences of 10 and
20. The preference of 10 acts as the primary mailserver, the preference of
20 acts as a backup. You're done.
>however I want to make sure that if one fails the other ...
This is defined in the SMTP protocol. If the one with the preference of 10
is not reachable, the mail will be sent to the one with the preference of
20. The one with the preference of 20 will then take care of sending the
mail to the primary.
>takes over moving mail with all user accounts in tact ..
I'm not sure what you mean. Technically, yes -- the backup will take care
of moving the mail to the primary, and no changes will be made to the user
accounts. But I think you mean something else, like clustering.
>Now I assume I can point both to the same MSSQL database at the
>same time ..
No, no, no.
With SMTP, the primary mailserver accepts all the mail for the domains that
it is primary for. It also knows exactly what to do with any piece of mail
to the domain -- store it locally, forward it, bounce it, etc. The backup
knows nothing about the domain -- it simply accepts any piece of mail for
the domain, and hands it off to the primary (which then takes care of
storing it locally, forwarding it, or bouncing it).
Even if the backup did know which users you had, and tried storing the
E-mail locally on the backup server, you would have two issues: First,
users wouldn't be able to get their mail from the backup. Second, even if
you had a way for them to do that, they would have to check both servers
for their mail.
You could use the same storage, but that would either be expensive or slow
(a LAN share is way too slow). And, it would either be expensive or in the
same geographical location, minimizing redundancy.
>how would this or could this be made transparent to the user? .. Ideas?
Well, it depends on exactly what you are trying to do. If you are just
trying to get both to connect to your user database so the backup will be
able to act as a backup, you don't have to worry -- it doesn't need to know
about your users. If you are trying to do something more than SMTP (IE
users can receive their mail from the backup), then you would need to use
clustering or a proprietary solution of some sort. There has been some
talk here about clustering and that it can work with IMail, so you might
find something if you search the archives.
-Scott
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