There is a priority in DNS for each MX record. MX mail.domain.com 10 MX mail2.domain.com 20 MX mail3.domain.com 30 MX mail4.domain.com 40
What will happen is the lower the number, the higher the priority; if mail. isn't responding, it will try mail2, if that doesn't respond, it'll try mail3 - if in the end none respond, it will wait a certain amount of time and try again; eventually, if none work, it will bounce it back to you undeliverable. To get around the possibility of random e-mail delivery, I actually went this route: This is from my bind zone file: IN MX 1 aspmx.l.google.com. IN MX 5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com. IN MX 5 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com. automail.domain.com. IN MX 1 automail.domain.com. automail.commissionriver.com. IN A XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX Than I have google setup to forward all unknown accounts to automail.domain.com - which delivers cronjob e-mails so I didn't have to pay for those. If you don't want to send all unknowns from google to your 2nd mail server, you can setup a Group and have it send to [email protected] Does that make sense? On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Daniel C. <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 2:01 PM, William Atteood <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Yes. Setup a second mx say mail2.domain.com > > Won't this result in mail2.domain.com randomly getting emails for > accounts that should go to mail1.domain.com? It's my understanding > that, while mail is *supposed* to be delivered to the MX records in > order, it doesn't always happen that way, and that it's acceptable to > deliver mail to any MX record for the domain. > > Practical upshot being, is it possible to make a non-MX DNS record and > tell gmail to forward them to it? If it is, this would prevent other > mail systems from accidentally sending mail to the secondary server on > accident. But Gmail may only be happy with forwarding mail to MX > records. > > -Dan > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > -- Warm regards, William Attwood Idea Extraordinaire [email protected] Vince Lombardi<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vince_lombardi.html> - "We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time." /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
