 |  |
>>>It's easier if we want to move the mailserver to another machine.
Re: coincidence?
From: Men & Mice Support
Date: Friday, June 16, 2000
Time: 3:05:42 pm
>>>This way we just need to put the mailserver on another mac and
>>>it the secondary address without any dns changes, so no mail-delay...
>>
>>OK, that's a decent reason. You could also set up a second
>>(concurrent) mail server with about the same amount of down-time
>>(under 5 seconds) if you wanted to put them on the same address for
>>now and separate them later.
>
>How do you mean, can you explain a bit more...?
OK, suppose you have a combination mail/DNS server, 192.168.0.1:
tnt.be. NS ns1.tnt.be.
tnt.be. MX 10 mail.tnt.be.
ns1.tnt.be. A 192.168.0.1
mail.tnt.be. A 192.168.0.1
Then suppose you need to separate the two services. First, on your
new mail server (192.168.0.2), you configure SIMS as a relay (backup)
server for your domains. Then you copy over all of its configuration
and application files to 192.168.0.1.
Then you deactivate the copy of SIMS on 192.168.0.1, move its files
out of the way, install the new relay server, and launch it. If
you're careful, you'll be without a mail server for less than 5
seconds.
Now copy the older copy of SIMS over to 192.168.0.2. Although it's
running on the new mail server, it still thinks of itself as the
final destination of mail for your domains. In the meantime, the SIMS
on the old mail server is queuing up mail that it doesn't think
belongs to it, but it has nowhere to forward it - the designated
forward host isn't responding. (Make sure to configure it in advance
to forward messages for your domains to the new mail server, rather
than looking at the DNS data.)
Configure your DNS data by changing and adding appropriate records:
tnt.be. MX 20 relay.tnt.be.
relay.tnt.be. A 192.168.0.1
mail.tnt.be. A 192.168.0.2
Now your relay server will deliver all of its queued mail to your
main (new) mail server, over the course of the next (retry-time). All
of the previously uncollected mail is still on mail.tnt.be - even
though that name has moved from one machine to another. Those mail
servers out in the world that get cached records indicating that the
relay server is really mail.tnt.be will send mail to the relay
server, which will forward it to the new server.
No mail clients need to be reconfigured, because they're set to use
the name, not the IP address. Just make sure to tell users that there
will be a 1 hour planned outage before starting this.
I'm sure that someone more familiar with SIMS could come up with a
more efficient way to do the switch, above. I'm simply not very
familiar with mail servers anymore - it's been years since I managed
one.
____________________________________________________________________
Chris Buxton cbuxton@menandmice.com
Men & Mice http://www.menandmice.com
Makers of: QuickDNS Pro
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