Re: Back-up scheme, 2 qmail servers
My question is, will there be any implications "Out_There" of suddenly having a new IP and hostname for our mailserver, assuming we make the appro DNS changes? Maybe you could arrange it on your router via port forwarding? You set it up to forward all conenction for ports 25 i 110 to first machine. set up the secod to monitor the first one and in an event of failure, dynamicaly reconfigure port forwarding on your router to point to the second machine. later on , when your first machine is up and running you can manualy revert your router to the previous state (or even make it automatic too). Hope you've got what i mean (sorry for bad english). Kris
Re: Back-up scheme, 2 qmail servers
Eric Dahnke wrote: Hello List, We have a server moving about 9000 msgs per day and want to have a second qmail server waiting on our network to take over in the event of a failure. Our current thinking is: - an identical qmail installation on a backup machine - daily copy of /home /control and /alias to backup machine - in the event of a massive failure unplug the ethernet from the main server and plug into the backup machine. (I realize we will lose the queue --normally just full of waiting bounces-- and all msgs received for local users since the last backup) My question is, will there be any implications "Out_There" of suddenly having a new IP and hostname for our mailserver, assuming we make the appro DNS changes? Any other comments on this kind of idle machine waiting backup scheme? (the main mail server is dpt raid fived) cheers - eric Why don't you just set up your second server as an MX server and use the handy dandy MX routing feature in named to automatically reroute mail in the event of a failure. The MX server will hold all the messages while you repair your server and automatically resend them when everything is back online. This is probably the perfect solution for you, *especially* since you have a raid 5. Don't be looking for a harddrive failure anytime soon :) Your harddrives are the only irreplaceable components because they contain your data, so anything else could be repairable in the time it takes you to scrounge up the hardware. -- Cris Daniluk [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Digital Services Network, Inc. http://www.dsnet.net 1129 Niles-Cortland Road, Warren, Ohio 44484 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (330) 609-8624 ext. 20 Fax (330) 609-9990 The Web Hosting Specialists -
Re: Back-up scheme, 2 qmail servers
Andy Walden escribió: - an identical qmail installation on a backup machine - daily copy of /home /control and /alias to backup machine - in the event of a massive failure unplug the ethernet from the main server and plug into the backup machine. (I realize we will lose the queue --normally just full of waiting bounces-- and all msgs received for local users since the last backup) My question is, will there be any implications "Out_There" of suddenly having a new IP and hostname for our mailserver, assuming we make the appro DNS changes? If its not going to be online unless failure occurs, why would you give it a different ip or hostname? Because the two machines are connected via a second 192. network which does the backup. Therefore, must have different IP's and hostname. thx - eric
Re: Back-up scheme, 2 qmail servers
Cris Daniluk escribió: Eric Dahnke wrote: Hello List, We have a server moving about 9000 msgs per day and want to have a second qmail server waiting on our network to take over in the event of a failure. Our current thinking is: - an identical qmail installation on a backup machine - daily copy of /home /control and /alias to backup machine - in the event of a massive failure unplug the ethernet from the main server and plug into the backup machine. (I realize we will lose the queue --normally just full of waiting bounces-- and all msgs received for local users since the last backup) My question is, will there be any implications "Out_There" of suddenly having a new IP and hostname for our mailserver, assuming we make the appro DNS changes? Any other comments on this kind of idle machine waiting backup scheme? (the main mail server is dpt raid fived) cheers - eric Why don't you just set up your second server as an MX server and use the handy dandy MX routing feature in named to automatically reroute mail in the event of a failure. The MX server will hold all the messages while you repair your server and automatically resend them when everything is back online. This is probably the perfect solution for you, *especially* since you have a raid 5. Don't be looking for a harddrive failure anytime soon :) Your harddrives are the only irreplaceable components because they contain your data, so anything else could be repairable in the time it takes you to scrounge up the hardware. OK, I was thinking about something similar, but you've got me here. You say "The MX server will hold all the messages while you repair your server and automatically resend them when everything is back online." What do you mean by hold all the messages? Our mailserver does both smtp and pop, so therein lies the problem. Great, so the MX rolls and the backup server accepts smtp for our domains. But what about pop? When the primary server comes back up, users would need to pop both servers to get all their mail, and that would turn into a mess. Or am I not understanding. thx - eric
Re: Back-up scheme, 2 qmail servers
On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Eric Dahnke wrote: What do you mean by hold all the messages? Our mailserver does both smtp and pop, so therein lies the problem. Great, so the MX rolls and the backup server accepts smtp for our domains. But what about pop? When the primary server comes back up, users would need to pop both servers to get all their mail, and that would turn into a mess. Or am I not understanding. I have one subdomain with something like this: - primary mail server, has lower MX records, users, pop, imap, etc. - secondary mail server, higher MX records, no users, no pop, etc. If the primary mail server goes down, messages are queued on the backup server. This is accomplished by making the backup server a "null client" as defined in the qmail FAQ. When the primary server comes back online after a failure, the queued messages on the backup server are delivered to the primary server. Pop users would have an interuption in service, but no lost messages. In the case of an extened outage of the primary server, you could build or fall back to a entirely different primary server by changing the MX records for your mail domain, and changing the qmail/control/smtproutes file. - Ari -- Ari Rubenstein Unix Operations Engineer Digex, West Coast Sun Cert'd SysAdmin [EMAIL PROTECTED] 408-873-4256
Re: Back-up scheme, 2 qmail servers
Eric Dahnke wrote: Cris Daniluk escribió: Eric Dahnke wrote: Hello List, We have a server moving about 9000 msgs per day and want to have a second qmail server waiting on our network to take over in the event of a failure. Our current thinking is: - an identical qmail installation on a backup machine - daily copy of /home /control and /alias to backup machine - in the event of a massive failure unplug the ethernet from the main server and plug into the backup machine. (I realize we will lose the queue --normally just full of waiting bounces-- and all msgs received for local users since the last backup) My question is, will there be any implications "Out_There" of suddenly having a new IP and hostname for our mailserver, assuming we make the appro DNS changes? Any other comments on this kind of idle machine waiting backup scheme? (the main mail server is dpt raid fived) cheers - eric Why don't you just set up your second server as an MX server and use the handy dandy MX routing feature in named to automatically reroute mail in the event of a failure. The MX server will hold all the messages while you repair your server and automatically resend them when everything is back online. This is probably the perfect solution for you, *especially* since you have a raid 5. Don't be looking for a harddrive failure anytime soon :) Your harddrives are the only irreplaceable components because they contain your data, so anything else could be repairable in the time it takes you to scrounge up the hardware. OK, I was thinking about something similar, but you've got me here. You say "The MX server will hold all the messages while you repair your server and automatically resend them when everything is back online." What do you mean by hold all the messages? Our mailserver does both smtp and pop, so therein lies the problem. Great, so the MX rolls and the backup server accepts smtp for our domains. But what about pop? When the primary server comes back up, users would need to pop both servers to get all their mail, and that would turn into a mess. Or am I not understanding. thx - eric I think you are a bit confused as to what an MX really is. Your MX server, once properly configured, will put the mail messages sent to users on your regular server in a holding queue. Once this server is back online, the MX server will jump in and send off these messages that it has been holding. There is no POP involved on this server. As far as POP access on your other server, yes, it IS down, but no messages will be lost. Once the server goes back up, the MX will send off the mail and users will get all their messages. They'll never notice anything happened, except for the annoying inconvenience of the server being down for a while. -- Cris Daniluk [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Digital Services Network, Inc. http://www.dsnet.net 1129 Niles-Cortland Road, Warren, Ohio 44484 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (330) 609-8624 ext. 20 Fax (330) 609-9990 The Web Hosting Specialists -
