Mail Servers

[jayv007]

My other great question is this:

So, hypothetically speaking, let's say I have a shared hosting account with BlueHost, bcn-pa.org (herein referred to as "Shared"). And over at Surpass I have redundancy.bcn-pa.org ("Redundancy"), but Redundancy is actually a Dedicated Server, which I hypothetically have scouring the earth for websites and forums dedicated to beer.

Since I had Shared first and my 40 organization members regularly communicated with each other and the outside world by e-mail, I think it's best to leave them all on Shared for now.

But a week later I'm wondering if there is an easy way to use Redundancy, via MX records. How can I point an MX record to Redundancy, and another to Shared, have regular daily e-mail operations undisturbed, but still use Redundancy to process all of the e-mail?

Is it even possible?

[fury]

You can have HTTP traffic and mail traffic go through two different servers. This will need to be configured properly on BOTH servers, but first it will require setting up all of the mail accounts and such on the SECOND server (redundancy). Then the server which hosts your MAIN domain, the one where your DNS records point to at your registar, you will need modify the MX records for the domain to use the redundancy IP instead of localhost.

[mgk]

trouble with having two mailservers is storing the emails. If you forward on to another then that is fine.

Also having 2 mx is fine but in a CPanel environment does not really mean redundancy as with CPANEL you have a DNS single point of failure. So if "shared" is down no-one can access "redundancy" either

[jayv007]

Thanks, mgk. Maybe I'll shy away from that for now. I just called it Redundancy, actually, because my last e-mail had me being redundant, but I was looking for something that would in effect be redundant.

You can have HTTP traffic and mail traffic go through two different servers. This will need to be configured properly on BOTH servers, but first it will require setting up all of the mail accounts and such on the SECOND server (redundancy). Then the server which hosts your MAIN domain, the one where your DNS records point to at your registar, you will need modify the MX records for the domain to use the redundancy IP instead of localhost.

OK, Fury. Now when you say "properly on BOTH servers" I figure it like this. Could you let me know if I'm right?

1. On Redundancy's WHM I make a new cPanel account which is just called bcn-pa.org. I figure that because users don't e-mail ryebustportershared.bcn-pa.org; they email ryebustporterbcn-pa.org.
   Plus if I don't do this step I'd think I'd have to make the e-mail addresses yuenglinglagerredundancy.bcn-pa.org.
2. On Redundancy's cPanel account for bcn-pa.org I add all of the mail accounts
3. Ask Shared's host to add the MX record for Redundancy, and make it a higher priority than Shared.

Eventually, at some point, I would assume I can remove Shared's mail accounts, and no e-mail messages would get lost in the shuffle. And what if the accounts on Shared have a different password than on Redundancy? When would that become an issue, immediately or when I remove Shared?

I have a lot of questions because I don't wanna try it out myself, ruin everyone's e-mail, and lose business, because that's a sure way of losing a job! ^_^

Any help would be helpful. Any redundancy would be redundant.

[mgk]

P.S. The DNS issue can be solved by using an outside service like zoneedit ect