Re: backup mail server

["Grant M.-2" <user=130@nabble.blu.org>]

 The way that I did what you are talking about is to setup my backup mail 
server as a caching mail server. Basically what that means is that the 
backup mail server just holds onto all the mail it receives, and then 
you have to have your primary tell it to forward anything it has on. 
It's been so long since I'd set it up, I can't even recall how I did it, 
but it was just using Sendmail. When the mail server would go down or 
stop responding for some reason, the backup server would just receive 
all of the mail and hold it. When we got the primary back up and 
running, there was a startup script that would call out to the backup 
and tell it to forward everything on. If you don't do this, the backup 
will just hold it forever. 

Then, if you set the MX record for your primary mail server to a 
preference value of 10 (the default), and set your backup mail server to 
a preference value of say, 50, when the primary goes offline, all mail 
should be delivered to the backup and held. You have to be careful, 
though. Some mail server's don't wait very long before they failover to 
the backup, so you need to have the primary call out to the backup 
several time a day just to be sure. 

I initially set this up when we moved from one building to another. I 
setup the caching server at the new location, and then went back and 
brought down the primary. This meant that all of the mail was then sent 
to the backup for caching. I then moved the server to the new building, 
installed it and brought it up, and just like magic there was not a 
single missed email, and no annoying "I can't send this right now" 
messages sent to the customers. 
Grant M. 
-- 
Grant Mongardi 
Senior Systems Engineer 
NAPC 

[hidden email] 
http://www.napc.com/
781.894.3114 phone 
781.894.3997 fax 

NAPC | technology matters 


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