Home / server / Questions / 415312
Accepted
sameold
Asked: 2012-08-08 16:40:27 +0800 CST

On a secondary mail server, are accounts mirrored

  • 772

I'm told that it's best practice to have a secondary MX record pointing to a secondary mail server in case the main one fails.

If the main mail server fails, how will the users on the main server get their email? Do I need to mirror all user accounts on the secondary server?

I'm new to mail servers, so I'm not sure if my question makes sense.

email

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Answer: it depends. Most secondary server setups just hold the mail until the primary comes back up, at which point the mail is either delivered or bounced.

    If you have either a separate user database that both servers have access to (eg LDAP) or you regularly clone your account list between the servers, then you could probably configure a mailserver to act as a secondary (forwarding the mail to the primary server when it's back up) and only accept mail for valid addresses.

    • 6

  2. This depends entirely on your mail server architecture. In an Exchange setup for example, you can have multiple edge/hub transports, multiple CASes, and mirrored mail databases using DAGs.

    • 3