Hi everyone. As far as I can see, I never received a response about my last
question. However, I have a different question. I understand that a lot of
you think a backup MX is not a good idea and i understand why you feel that
way. My question is this... As a matter of best practices, if my primary,
in-house mail server which is hosting 500 domains/10,000 users was offline
for 24+ hours, would a backup MX not make sense in this scenario? Or if
this is not the best solution, what is the alternative? Thanks.
On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 3:19 PM Linda Pagillo <lpadnet@???> wrote:
> Thank you all for this valuable information and advice. I appreciate it. I
> have been thinking a lot about this over the past few days. Currently we
> have Backup MX servers (Windows-based) in place for a few of our
> Windows-based mail servers and they have been working quite well. We really
> don't have much of a problem with spam because Message Sniffer,
> SpamAssassin for Windows, and a few other AS/AV programs we are using are
> doing a really great job in keeping spam to a minimum.
>
> I was chatting with one of my colleagues about the advice that you guys
> and the Postfix list members provided. A saw a few times during those posts
> that MX backup servers are probably not a good idea in general and the
> reasons all seem to be pointing to the spammer problem. Since this is the
> case, I brought up the subject of anti-spam gateways since we use those as
> well in our environment. In the event of a primary server outage, our
> gateways spool the mail until the primary server becomes available again,
> however, if the gateway had an outage or failure, we would be in the same
> boat. The mail would be rejected/bounced. I'm aware that most commercial
> gateways use a round-robin so that they can essentially be "always up", but
> what about the smaller clients who run their own mail server from their
> offices and cannot afford a good gateway solution? I think folks in that
> situation would benefit from a backup MX. That is why we implement them for
> a lot of our smaller clients. So far, so good. :)
>
> With that being said, besides the issues with spammers which we feel we
> have a good handle on, are there any other reasons why a backup MX is still
> not a good idea?
>
> Thanks again!
>
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 6:48 AM Gedalya via Exim-users <exim-users@???>
> wrote:
>
>> On 4/8/20 4:33 AM, Andrew C Aitchison via Exim-users wrote:
>> >
>> > Exim does recipient callouts and cutthrough delivery.
>> > Are either of these useful for an MX backup ?
>>
>> Callout caching can be potentially useful when the primary is down. Not a
>> complete solution of course.
>>
>>
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>
