Mail Spooling Service

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TechieSooner

Supreme [H]ardness
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Basically if my internet ever goes down, it'll still keep my mail cached until my servers are accessible again.

Anyone know of solutions?

Was looking at Postini, it's $12/user/year (plus activation fees) and they make me buy it for 125 users. So it's pricey for what I need it for.

I need it for the

1) Failover/Spooling
2) Increased security (limit SMTP port to specific IP addresses)


The spam filtering I don't care about. I like managing that locally with Untangle.

Thanks!
 
Sometimes ISP's will do this for a small fee, i would ask your provider.

However with Postini you get spam protection as well,
 
I use dyndns.com for my company (small university). They will hold unlimited emails up to 10 days for $32.
 
boatasiaus said:
I think the key line on the linked page is "STARTING AT $29.95"...
Click to expand...

Yea but when you click on More Pricing it says it's $29.95 per domain... I've only got one domain I need to use.

That DynDNS one looks promising too. You just hook it up and they cache ALL email to your domain, or like Postini is there setup involved??
 
With dyndns, you create a secondary MX record pointing to their servers. That's about the extent of the work involved.
 
versello said:
With dyndns, you create a secondary MX record pointing to their servers. That's about the extent of the work involved.
Click to expand...

Seems to be the cheapest alternative, I mean why wouldn't anyone do this at least????

Less than $40 a YEAR? You'd be stupid not to ;)

I'm assuming it's all automatic. My internet goes down, they start spooling. It comes back up, it all gets passed back down.

Can I set dyndns as my ONLY MX record? That way I can block all SMTP communication except from their servers.
 
yup it acts as a smart host in a sense, you can accept only from their ips, either DynDNS or No-IP.

Either one works, I have used both. Now I use postini but smaller users.
 
whoops just looked at them a little more, i never use No-IP i have only use DynDNS, still use it at one clients, most other clients are on Postini tho.
 
No, you cannot use dyndns as your primary MX. dyndns looks at your primary MX record for e-mail delivery once your SMTP service is available. What you're asking for is more like some sort of mail relay.
 
OK, well then who would you guys suggest?
I want them to be primary MX so that I can only accept SMTP connections from ONE place.
 
Techie I usually use Postini now.

I would use DynDNS Mail Relay like we do if I didn't use Postini

http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/relay_howto.html

Look at that readme. You point your MX record to them and tell it the static IP of your mail server.

You can then configure your firewall to only accept mail from their IP range.

Call em up they will tell you that.
 
Sounds like what I want to do... DynDNS.

My question is, any config needed on my end in the firewall and/or Exchange?
I'll eventually restrict SMTP down to their server IP addresses but not until I know it'll work.

Thing that comes to my mind is that DynDNS's servers sending me so much mail (and no more coming from anywhere else anymore).... Exchange might think it's a spam server and start blocking it. Would that be an issue? Tried poking through ESM but I don't see anywhere I can allow incoming mail based on IP anywhere.
 
what i do is configure my firewall to accept incoming mail from DYNDNS IP/IPS only and deny everything else

and i create another rule that says only lan IP of server can send mail out through 25.
 
So nothing to change in Exchange then?

I'm thinking of going with their service to cut back all of the obvious spam, and then still leave my Untangle device to do all the questionable stuff (It's the best spam filtering solution out there IMO).

Another feature I liked is the whitelisting... Kinda a PITA to log onto their website but I can have it drop any email address I don't explicitly allow.
 
there is nothing that needs to be done on Exchange..

Since you're adjusting your MX and creating/adjusting a rule on your FW to point allow only a certain IP range to communicate to the Exchange box using SMTP -- you're good.
 
Cool.

Any tips on transition for those who have done it?

Seems to me like it'd be easy.

Setup all settings at DynDNS, let it sit a day to make sure they are good...
Then change the MX record on my domain to point to DynDNS... And then let it run a week to be absolutely sure all DNS has updated then I can lock the ports down.
 
What i would do, is create multiple MX records (different prioritys)

Keep you current MX record for 48 hours at lowest priority so you don't loose any emails. After the 48 hours the other MX should be propagated, delete your original MX record, then lock down the ports.
 
What i would do, is create multiple MX records (different prioritys)

Keep you current MX record for 48 hours at lowest priority so you don't loose any emails. After the 48 hours the other MX should be propagated, delete your original MX record, then lock down the ports.
Click to expand...


great point -- make sure you delete the old MX record pointing directly to your mail server. If you don't, SPAMMERS could bypass your dyndns setup and hit your mail server directly.
 
Why is this service so cheap, I'm wondering? I mean, say you've got 300,000 emails per week, and at $42.50 per year, that's less than $1/week ????

How do they make money off that deal?
 
no issues, client just renewed his. all they are doing is passing the MX record for you, if the server goes down they start to hold it, its not ilke they are holding emails all the time.
when i called them once they were very helpful, so i would trust it.
 
marley1 said:
no issues, client just renewed his. all they are doing is passing the MX record for you, if the server goes down they start to hold it, its not ilke they are holding emails all the time.
when i called them once they were very helpful, so i would trust it.
Click to expand...

But they're also scanning for viruses, block lists, etc... Not just a passthrough!
 
Well geeze... So ridiculously cheap... What do they make money on?
DNS registrations?
 
i dunno they must make money as they have a tech support team and have been around since i started using computer.

mail relay or mail hop backup mx.

they will do what you want, just use it and dont worry how the company makes money, if they have been around for a while i dont think they will be goign anywhere, if they do or you dont lke it just flip the mx records and your good to go!

if i wasn't using postini I would be using that and untangle.
 
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