Hi, Your report is quite interesting. It's weard to hear, that you guys in the us have power outages for 24 hours. Fortunately our servers are protected against power losses. Our provider has a big fat diesel UPS in the basement.
A few weeks ago, i had also the idea to setup a second mail server as backup mx server. I realized, that this solution has only one benefit: Incoming mails will be collected until the main server is back. Usually a sending server will try to send the mails for at least a day or two if the main server is not available. So, make this really sense? The customers on the other end have no benefits of the backup mx server: No sending Mail is possible and webmail is not available. Now i installed a second server in my office. This is a 1:1 Copy of the main server. All data will be synchronized every 2 hours. If my main mail server fails, i have to change the NAT-settings on my firewalls only. The only bad thing is, that our connection from the office to the internet is not really fast, it's ADSL. But it's good enough and better than nothing. > So, the simple question here is this: Do companies, or ISPs have backup MX > servers > off line (and off site) just for the purpose of turning them on when the > WHOLE site of > the primary mail servers go down? I think your idea is quite good. You can extend this configuration with a full sync server. The effort to do this, is not really heavy. ============================================ Am Mittwoch, 30. M�rz 2005 um 21:10 schrieben Sie: > I have been wondering about the intended purpose of backup MX servers > originally and > the disadvantages of them being around WHEN there is no need for them. > For example a webhosting site completely went down about 6-8 months ago > because of a > major power outage in the city for more than 24 hours. (a major power cable > was cut on a > construction site). > I tried to call their 800 number, local number, to find out why is my > website down, > all lines were busy or disconnected or not available. I started thinking that > the > company went bankrupt and got away without even saying bye. (I didn't know > about that > major power outage until next day.) > Anyway, cutting it short, the Webhosting firm told us later, that they have > learned > from this incident and will setup a 2nd website and a 2nd 800 number in > another state > for incidents like this. > I live and work in the Los Angeles area (Glendale) the land of quakes and > frequent > power outages. Recently I realized, that the backup MX server that is > provided to us by > our ISP is the MAIN "source" of all the spam mail that our Imail server is > receiving and > makes half of the spam filtering tools useless because of this. > I was also considering setting up 2 "front runner" MX servers in house > hiding the > Imail server, (and not use ISP provided MX server) but then I realized, that > in case of > any power outage or other disaster, the email server and both MX servers > would be out of > service while the network is down. > I came to the conclusion, that the ideal MX server for a company like us > (Architect > firm with 80 employees) would be a "ready to deploy" backup MX server OFF > SITE, that > would be listed as a backup MX server in the DNS records, but normally it > would NOT be > "available" until I make a phone call to that MX service provider to turn it > on because > our site went down completely. > This way, spammers could not abuse it during normal business operation > because it is > off, but as soon some "disaster" strike and I don't see recovering from it > within a > reasonable time, by making one phonecall I can make sure that our firm will > not loose > any email that were sent to us. (I am mainly concerned out emails that are > received > because of subscriptions.) > So, what do you guys think? Is there any point here, or I am just not aware > of what else is already available out there? > So, the simple question here is this: Do companies, or ISPs have backup MX > servers > off line (and off site) just for the purpose of turning them on when the > WHOLE site of > the primary mail servers go down? > Because if there is such thing, then I will strongly consider setting up > just one > SMTP gateway for spam filtering with Imail server hiding behind it and get a > deal with > such backup MX service provider. This way all spam will be received by the > gateway > server, and MX servers will NOT interfere with them during normal business > operation. > Geza > To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List > Archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge > Base/FAQ: > http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ ============================================ -- Mit freundlichen Gr�ssen -------------------------------------------- Merlin Consulting Martin Schaible Bahnhofstrasse 27 CH-8702 Zollikon Phone: +41 44 391 30 00 Fax: +41 44 391 32 49 Mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.merlinconsulting.ch Support: http://support.merlinconsulting.ch GPS: N47 20.235 E8 34.226 -------------------------------------------- News - Neue Produkte: .:. Kiwi Syslog Monitor .:. Paessler GmbH .:. Sawmill Loganalyzer .:. 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