I have 2 SMTP Servers:1. SMTP-InBound
- SMTP-Outbound
I want them to fail over to each other.
I plan to use a cluster.
I am going to cluster my Inbound SMTP server with my Outbound SMTP server as a fail over so that my OutBound-SMTP will Fail over to
my Inbound SMTP if my Outbound SMTP fails. Then Inbound-SMTP will have to route both Inbound and Outbound mail and vice verse.
How do I do this if I have specified a specfic SMTP server set to send outbound mail in a configuration document in the NAB under Router/SMTP in Field: Relay host for messages leaving the local Internet domain:
SMTP-Outbound.
This being the case I need
to set up two of Configuration documents (Router/SMTP) one for the Primary Outbound (SMTP-Outbound) and another configuration document for my failover SMTP Server (SMTP-Inbound) I do not see a clear way to fail over the SMTP Mail routing once I set the configuration documents. Got any thoughts?
I just want to be sure I can fail over to another SMTP server once I create this Configuration document to send my Outbound Mail. I hoping my cluster configuration will make this work.
I need your thoughts.
Thanks for your Help Jerry
Subject: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
Jerry, I don’t know how many home/mail servers these SMTP servers will service nor do I know what you are doing with your firewall, but here’s an idea. Since R5, the Domino Router tasks can send outgoing SMTP mail natively. Why not configure all of your home/mail servers to send e-mail directly to the Internet. Just disable the SMTP listener task. This way they can send mail but not receive mail. Setting up a mail cluster between home/mail servers will allow the servers to have failover in mail routing.
For your SMTP inbound failover, simply create two SMTP inbound servers and create two MX records, one that points to each SMTP inbound server. I would recommend that you set the priority for both to “10” so that they load balance. If one would fail, the other would receive all of the mail for your domain until you can resolve the failure.
Although IBM still recommends configuring SMTP Inbound servers because a mal-formed MIME Header can cause a Domino SMTP task to hang, you have very little risk in configuring each of the home/mail servers to send mail directly to the Internet. You shouldn't even need to open port 25 in your firewall because your server (inside the firewall) is initiating all of the conversation.
Hope this helps.
Kevin
Subject: RE: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
Hi Kevin,I read your response and realized you had a good idea here…but I need some help. I have 30 servers worldwide all in the same notes named netword that use notes routing to send outbound to an smtp server in its own notes named network…but I like your idea of sending outbound locally. I guess my question is…when I added an smtp connection doc for internet mail (based on the . Foreign SMTP domain doc) to one server, ALL the servers worldwide “forgot” about their LAN connection doc to the regular outbound smtp server, and started sending to this one server once the directory replicated out. I guess I would be able to control this by putting an smtp connect doc on every server which is fine, but I wanted to know if you know of another way to direct each server, one at a time, to send outbound directly to the internet??? Im going to assume if its possible, it has something to do with the Basics tab on the config doc, but Im not sure what all that Smart host stuff, etc. is.
Thanks.
Subject: RE: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
Well Kevin
I am really planing to use
-
SMTP-OUTBOUND
-
SMTP-INBOUND
as the clustered SMTP servers
I want to keep my home/mail servers away from sending mail directly to the internet. this is why I have 2 dedicated SMTP servers
I am going to set up my configuration document to send out going mail from my SMTP-OUTBOUND server only and if this fails my clustered SMTP-Inbound set-up should be triggered to send out going mail. Once SMTP-OUTBOUND is unavailable it will trigger SMTP-InBound.
SMTP-Inbound will be set receive Inbound mail and secondary MX record will be set for route Inbound mail to SMTP-Outbound. This Failover is a no brainier. SMTP-OUTBOUND is the one that I really have to test.
-
to be sure Outbound mail only routes through SMTP-Outboud due to the configuration document being set.
-
The Fail over
Thanks for your help
Jerry
P.S.
I wish Lotus had clear documentation on how to do this. You should be able to configure this very simply.
Subject: RE: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
Jerry, In R4.6, Foreign SMTP Domain documents and SMTP connection documents were used for mail routing. You may want to create a Foreign SMTP Domain document and then create SMTP connection documents for each home/mail server to your SMTP inbound/outbound servers. There is an example in the Domino Administrator help database. The only problem I see is that I am not sure you can set a priority for one SMTP connection document over another. The router task may use the first connection exclusively until it can’t establish a connection or it may use both. If you start to use the SMTP connection documents for mail routing, you will want to remove the reference to a “smart host” for mail routing in the Configuration documents of your server.
Hope this helps
Kevin
Subject: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
Here’s a link to a post that I made in the R5 forum. We’re currently running on R5, but this will work in 6 as well.
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/46dom.nsf/55c38d716d632d9b8525689b005ba1c0/d6b1cc0c4ccdda8985256de500571313?OpenDocument
Hope that helps
Subject: RE: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
Brian Thanks so much for you help on this!! This is very helpful. I was totally going the cluster route.
I want to be totaly clear on how you are setting the Primary Outbound Mail
server with failover. This is what I am going to do.
- I create my Server Group:
Group Name: SMTPOutboundServers
Group Type: Servers only
Members:
SMTP-Outbound
SMTP-Inbound
Will SMTP-Outbound be the Primary Outbound mail server in this order within the
Member field?
My Fail over Outbound mail server is:
SMTP-InBound OR? Do I need rename the servers to:
1SMTP-Outbound
2SMTP-Inbound
to reflect an alphanumerical order.
I am hoping the order in which I place them in the member field will work.
(Right?) I do-not want to rename my servers if I do not need to.
(Is there a such thing as a server alias? Just in case I do need to reaname
them)
- I create a Server Connection document:
Connection Type: Local Area Network
Source Server: SMTPOutboundServers
Routing Task: SMTP Mail Routing
and the other fields etc…
These two documents will serve as configuration for my Outbound mail server and
failover. Right?
Can you verify this that I have set this up correctly? Is this all I need to
do? This is a very clever and simple idea!!
Thanks!!
Jerry
Subject: RE: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
-
Group order does not matter. It is purely based on alphanumeric order.
-
Yes, it simplified our mail routing documents significantly. I don’t know why this isn’t documented anywhere.
Good luck. Please post back how it works out for you.
Subject: Alas… not working in R7
Subject: 2 SMTP servers: Failover SMTP-Inbound to SMTP-OutBound Mail?
I have a solution however I doubt it’s what you are looking for and it could depend on the complexity of your mail settings. You could set up two linux servers running a mail server(qmail for instance). All messages that go to it would automatically go to the Domino server/or to the internet.
At http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org, they have a suite of documentation and programs that are used to failover to another computer if a computer/process goes down. You would also avoid additional Domino licenses for this.