Subject: Multiple mail domains each on a different IP?
Greetings!
On our current project, we had a need to implement multiple mail domains via the same server. So, I think our solution is right down your alley, but probably not the way that you’re thinking about it.
First, a Domino server can be configured to send and receive mail for multiple Internet mail domains. The in-bound addressing is extremely easy, because once you configure numerous mail domains, the incoming mail will now be accepted by any of the configured domains. Out-bound mail is a little different.
If you are fortunate enough that all of your users are segregated into their respective e-mail groups, you can simply change their Internet address field in each person’s person doc. This way when outbound messages are sent by the user, the sender’s e-mail address will have the correct address when it is received.
Now, in the cases where users might need more than one outbound e-mail address…the easiest way to address that is to setup multiple location docs for that user. Each location doc has an Internet address field that will override the person doc on the server…they just have to make sure that they are using the correct location doc when sending e-mail.
As far as using the same IP for outbound…THAT is not a problem at all. The reason being that this is actually a DNS issue, and multiple MX records (for different Internet mail domains), can point to the same IP address. If someone does a lookup on your business, it just shows that your IP address is the mail server for companya.com, companyb.com, companyc.com, and so on.
It likely sounds much more difficult than it really is, but it really isn’t all that bad. And, for what it’s worth, we’re ding this very thing ourselves, and it works very well!
The only other thing that could get overlooked… is firewall and mail scanning. We’ve got hardware devices for both, and both had to be configured to allow the additional Internet mail domains to be used. If you have a firewall, or mail scanner, that aren’t properly configured to allow the new domains, it won’t matter what you do on the Domino side… it won’t work!
The last bit of advice is that if your businesses are heavy heavy mail users, then you might also want to configure Domino to run multiple mail boxes. I wouldn’t get carried away there either, because where one mail box might seem slow, two is good… don’t just opt for a whole bunch, because then you impede performance by having too many. Unless mail flooding is the business, there probably isn’t much reason to go beyond three mail boxes.
Hope this helps!
-D