Mail and secondary mail server.

Question

Mail and secondary mail server.

Hello.

As I am working on my mail server I would like to ensure that I have some form of back system to prevent me from looosing e-mail messages in the future, specially those that are business related. Once in a while we experience a power outage and I would hate to loose an important business e-mail sent to us at a time when the mail server is down.

Questions:

1. Is there a way to have/use a remote secondary mail server so that in case an e-mail is sent but can't be delivery to our mail server, it is then re-routed to this secondary mail server so that it isn't lost. In this case how should this be set-up both on the server in OS X 1.6.8 and on the outside?

2. I plan to set up an account with Google or another e-mai service provider but would like my e-mail to use my own domain name instead. How simple would this be to set UP? Will Google allow the creation of e-mail accounts with the use of domain names other than its own?

Thank you in advance.

Posted on Jun 16, 2012 1:27 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

capaho

Level 4

3,673 points

Jun 16, 2012 7:43 AM in response to apple_customer

If your server is offline for a short time the sending server will retry every hour for a few days before it gives up, that's a standard configuration, so you shouldn't lose messages as the result of a power failure of short duration. The only time you will lose mail on the first pass is if your mail server reports a fatal error, like mail server configuration error, unknown user or blacklisted sender.

Reply

Answer 2

Jun 23, 2012 10:34 AM in response to capaho

Hi, capaho.

> The only time you will lose mail on the first pass is if your mail server reports a fatal error,

> like mail server configuration error, unknown user or blacklisted sender.

This is one of things I am afraid might happen. I am not an IT specialist and may have made a few mistakes along the way as I have setup my own server. I wanted to have systems in place that will work as safety nets for any mistakes I might have made. In addition I experience a problem that was very difficult to solve when I first installed this server. Apple had bundled a beta, broken version of Mailman with it and it took a long time and a lot of effort to finally get it work and be able to create mailing lists. In case Apple releases an upgrade to OS X Server tomorrow that causes the mailserver to stop working I need to know that I have a back-up system in place.

In business one lost or even delayed e-mail can have some real repercussions including financial ones that I would just prefer to avoid.

I am trying to accomplish one of two things (preferably the first):

1. Have redundancy - I would like to have all mail sent to me delivered simultaneously to two different servers and two separate addresses. Let me be more specific. As mail is directed by my registrar (in my case GoDaddy) I would like to have every e-mail addressed to me (1) delivered to my server so that the mail server can in turn deliver it to my mailbox(es) and (2) delivered to a another mail server to a second mailbox that will serve as a back-up to my server and mail boxes.

2. In case the above is not possible I would then like to have my registrar information setup in such a way that if it attempts to deliver the mail for a pre-specific amount of time (pre-specified by me, if possible so that I can have it setup for a shorter amount of time than the few days you describe) and is not successful it then delivers the mail to the second server in a priority list.

Do you have any idea as to how I can accomplish this ?

Thank you for your help and reply.

Reply

Answer 3

capaho

Level 4

3,673 points

Jun 23, 2012 8:15 PM in response to apple_customer

You can specifiy multiple MX records in DNS, but these are usually restricted to domain names and IP addresses that are part of the zone records for the domain. You would basically need a colocation system to have mail directed to two different servers using the same domain name. It would be more practical to simply have mail forwarded to a backup mail address at something like gmail or me.com.

If your mail server has a fatal error that would kill mail on the first pass, it would be affecting all mail, not just some messages, so it's unlikely you have such a problem. You could set the mail server to forward all undeliverable mail to the admin mail account in Server Admin. That would make sure you didn't miss any messages, but you would likely start getting a lot of spam that would otherwise bounce.

Reply

Answer 4

Jun 24, 2012 2:16 PM in response to capaho

Hi, capaho.

I just called GoDaddy (my registrar) and this time didn't get much help. My experience with GoDaddy has been nothing but extremely positive. Their customer service is one of the best I have experienced but today in particular I wasn't so lucky as the gentleman in technical support to helped me on the phone sounded very inexperienced and seemed to know less about this than I do (and that takes effort).

Both solutions you mentioned sound good to me and I do agree that having the e-mail forwarded to another acount would likely be the simplest solution. But how would I set this up ? How can I setup my account settings at GoDaddy so that when e-mail comes in it is directed to my server as the MX Record points to it, but a copy is also forwarded to a GMail or other similar e-mail account ?

It is important to me for this process to take place BEFORE not AFTER it hits my server. I have grown concerned about loosing business opportunities and facing financial losses from e-mails that are not delivered to me properly. My server can fail for a multitude of reason and I wish to prevent this.

> If your mail server has a fatal error that would kill mail on the first pass,it would be

> affecting all mail, not just some messages, so it's unlikely you have such a problem.

I have had this happen before and this is one of the reasons I am trying to establish some form of redundancy so it doesn't happen again in the future.

> You could set the mail server to forward all undeliverable mail to the admin mail account

> in Server Admin. That would make sure you didn't miss any messages, but you would

> likely start getting a lot of spam that would otherwise bounce.

How can I do this ? Can this be setup so that all undeliverable mail is forwarded to the admin account UNLESS it is undeliverable because the system has found it to be spam ? In other words, if the e-mail is undeliverable because the user account has been deleted or the address can't be found on the server the message would then be forwarded to the admin account. On the other hand, if the system has judged the e-mail to be spam it would then just be treated as such.

Any help you can offer with this issues will be very appreciated.

Thanks.

Reply