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Best way to setup a clustered mailserver?
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Best way to setup a clustered mailserver?

RaymiiRaymii Member
edited August 2012 in General

On a LEB. probably going to use Roundcube for the frontend since the last release is really awesome. How would I do the mail part itself clustered? Dovecot for the IMAP (over SSL), Postfix as the MTA? Exim maybe? No need for antivirus, I will be the only user. Spam filtering would be nice. And it has to be clustered, doesn't matter how (/var/mail via glusterfs maybe) so that when 1 server stops I dont lose my mail.

Comments

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    I've been considering using a cPanel account + Google Apps. Set the MX 0 to the cPanel account and if it goes down the remaining MX records will be fore Google Apps. I would love to find another option though because I hate Google so much for the headaches they've been causing us lately.

  • Cpanel + cpanel dnsonly setup can be used as clustered mail server and secondary mail exchanger.

    webmin could be useful too, but i havent tried personally.

  • Mailgun FTW

  • peppr please share your configuration for cpanel dns only :)

  • upfreakupfreak Member
    edited August 2012

    This can be done either manually or partial use of a plugin.

    This plugin makes dns only machines as secondary mail exchangers but it costs $10. However this can also be done manually following this tutorial which is free.

    to also use cpanel dns-only machine as outgoing mail-server/smtp-relay, you must add them in the cluster, and then check if exim is enabled in service manager. Spam Assassin can also be enabled if that is desired.
    In your main cpanel server, add ips of the dnsonly machines in additional mail server list. You can test it now by assigning a dns only ip as mailserver for an account/reseller

    I remember doing some tweaks regarding smtp relay on dns only servers, i will try to find those files / gather from my notes ( something like this)

    for load balancing/clustering of mail server (such as rotating mailserver ips) , i am not quite sure since i havent personally tested such a thing with cpanel.

    official response from cpanel is

    Greetings,
    
    Remote MySQL and DNS Clustering are supported in cPanel 11. However, mail and
    web clustering functionality will not be available until version 12.
    

    so expect some quirks with every update with this setup

    Thanked by 1tommy
  • @Raymii Mirroring of your IMAP server (rsync IMAP folders), and creating backup MX (simple with Postfix) are the simple part. Creating HA DNS schemes are what are going to be tricky. IMHO round robin DNS isn't good enough for what you're asking for.

  • Sorry, let me rephrase. Fail over DNS schemes are trickier. You're probably better off paying for it unless you're just in this exercise for the knowledge.

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