Re: [exim] exim as a load balancer

On Apr 30, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Chump Chumpster wrote:

> When we send out a newsletter to our subscribers, it tends to slow
> down our
> regular email from clients on our domain. I have other stand alone
> servers I
> could use as MTAs to share the burden when there's a spike in
> demand. Due to
> the constraints of our newsletter software and other infrastructure,
> what
> I'd like to do is this:
>
> Is it possible to have one Exim be the single MTA that the newsletter
> software talks to and have this server then act as a 'load balancer'
> or at
> least a 'round robin', by relaying to 3 other servers that do the
> actual
> delivery?


This has come up several times on the list.

Exim is not a great DELIVERY MTA when it comes to large amounts of
queued mail.

Postfix is much better at that sort of thing.

The simple solution is to install Postfix and have it's inbound SMTP
process listen on a different port (and possibly only listening on
localhost)

Put in a manualroute into your exim config that identifies your
newsletter email and have it route email to Postfix for delivery.

That way the bulk newsletter email leaves the Exim workspace ASAP and
a better tool for the job is properly employed.

Brian