On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Kevin Smith wrote:
> I still don't see the case for a backup mail server. If your server
> is down, the senders will continue to retry till you come back on-line
> or they give up. Most MTA's will retry for at least five days?
So when you come back up, 1000 MTAs all hit you at once. This has been
known (in the past) to knock a recovering mailserver right down again.
The advantage of a backup is that it can pass the stored mail to your
main server in a controlled way (e.g. with Exim it will probably send it
all over one SMTP connection), and if it is nearby (on the same LAN),
it can do it FAST.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book: http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book
