Exchange

Hi, I have 1 sbs 2000 server running exchange. I also have
a win2k server acting as a replication server. This
hopefully means that if my sbs2000 dies, people can still
logon via the replication server. My question is , Should
my main SBS 2000 go down, people won't get email. Is there
a way either using another win 2k server, or using my ISP
to provide fault tolerance so users can still get email.
I can't afford to buy a fresh copy of Exchange!

Thanks Simon

petergal
Tue Nov 04 19:54:48 CST 2003


Hello Simon,

For Exchange, you will want to have someone (your ISP possibly) "hold" your
mail if your server goes offline for any reason. You can do this by
creating an additional MX record on the internet with a higher priority
than your current one. Have the MX record point to someone (again,
possibly your ISP) and have that someone hold email for your domain.

Here is an example for testdomain.com:
=============================
testdomain.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger =
mail.testdomain.com
testdomain.com MX preference = 20, mail exchanger =
mail2.testdomain.com
=============================

In this example, if "mail.testdomain.com" (your server in this example)
goes down and someone tries to send mail to "testdomain.com", it will try
to connect to "mail.testdomain.com" (as it has the lowest priority) and
fail, then go to the next MX record with the next highest priority
"mail2.testdomain.com" and deliver the mail. It will then sit there until
it is "de-queued" or resent to your server (when it comes back online).

Thanks for posting!!

Regards,
Peter Gallagher
Microsoft Product Support
Small Business Server Team