Backup MX

[sjoram]

I've seen one or two threads on here regarding backup MX, but at this precise moment in time, they went a little over my head (granted I'm rather tired at the moment so grey matter not running at 100%).

I know everyone will agree that my idea of hosting my email (personal use, not business) on an ADSL service is probably not the best idea anyway, but it's worked reasonably well for years with a pretty stable ADSL provider.

I've unfortunately encountered some issues on migrating to a new ISP today and as a result my mail server is currently offline. I've been meaning to look into setting up some sort of backup MX for some time, but not got around to it.

Most of my email already has a backup MX facility out on the internet and will reach me eventually, but I wondered if there was any relatively easy means to maintain my own backup server on an alternative connection.

Ideally it would be nice if I can access the mails whilst on the backup MX (not from the mailbox directly but by viewing the raw text files in the config directory). Being that the primary and backup MX would be on different WAN links with no LAN links between them, another thread I saw with the mail being hosted on network storage to which both had access isn't an option in my case.

Any thoughts? (I hope the above makes sense, frazzled brain today!)

[Code Crafters]

To setup a backup Ability Mail Server I'd recommend the following scenario to most:

1) Primary Ability Mail Server in your main network location.
mail.yourdomain.com
Lowest Domain MX Number - Highest Priority (e.g. MX 10).
Standard mode domains and users.

2) Backup Ability Mail Server in a separate Internet location.
mail2.yourdomain.com
Higher Domain MX Number - Lower Priority (e.g. MX 20).
For each of your primary mail server domains, on this backup mail server add a Backup domain and static route relaying direct to your primary mail server (mail.yourdomain.com) with a long lifetime (e.g. 4 or more days to give you time to get primary mail server back online).

This way if your primary mail server is down your backup mail server will hold and try to forward mail to your primary until it comes back online. The MX priority means that mail will be always delivered to the primary if it's alive and your backup if it's not.

Sceanario 2:
Another tweak could be to use POP3 retrievals on the primary to pull mail from the backup and use standard domains on the backup with the same users to allow you to access the emails while the primary is down but this obviously requires you to use the right domain. You could even add another subdomain which points at mail.yourdomain.com and use that as the access point so that you can switch this to the backup manually to access emails so users use a single domain to access either. Obviously this is a little more work to allow access to emails from backup and in most cases the backup domain forwarding setup is easiest and best.

If any of this doesn't make sense let me know

[sjoram]

Only just read this properly - thanks Chris.

I don't have a second suitable location online yet - I'll look at this as soon as I do (hopefully few months time).

(Now I know you'd like me to buy a new licence for the backup server, but is there any reason I can't re-use my v2 licence on a v2 installation on the backup - my original server blew up and when I rebuilt I purchased and installed v3) - this is a home installation after all so budget comes to mind!

Cheers

[Code Crafters]

Yes, you can absolutely use your AMS 2 key with the AMS 2 download available via http://www.code-crafters.com/abilitymai ... index.html.

You could also probably manage with an AMS 3 Lite or Professional edition for a backup mail server as long as this supports enough domains and users. Check http://www.code-crafters.com/abilitymai ... tures.html for supported users / domains in each version.