Backup mail server?

[Paul Howarth]

On Mon, 2005-05-16 at 22:00 +0200, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> Am Mo, den 16.05.2005 schrieb Matthew Miller um 21:42:
> 
> > > > I do not agree.
> > > > I think it is not a good idea to allow my client see a warning about my
> > > > server unavailability.
> > > And how do you think you can prevent that without running a HA mail
> > > service?
> > 
> > By using a server with a lower MX priority. 
> 
> But how is that transparent to the clients? That was a criteria for
> Cosme. And I think he means clients trying to send mail. If
> mx1.domain.tld is off which is used by the clients for SMTP, how does it
> automatically switch to mx2.domain.tld without user intervention? If
> other MTAs send to domain.tld, then they will use the available MX,
> well. But as said before in this thread: properly configured MTAs will
> retry to deliver up to 5 days at least.

I think that what he meant was not outbound SMTP, but that if a sole MX
goes down for more than a few hours, anyone trying to send mail to the
domain(s) served by this server would get "Warning: Message Delayed"
type messages from their own SMTP relays, and it was this that he wanted
to avoid, as it might lead his own clients (people, not MUAs) to think
that his service was unreliable when they discovered this.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>