Mail Relay didn't kick-in during this morning's email outage

[bob_hog]

Greets folks...

When we had our little email issue this morning, someone attempting to send an email to my client's address got bounced...shouldn't the mail relay server have picked up the mail until the main server was accepting mail again? This would provide enough illusion of working email to keep clients from calling and from damaging the reliability of the services I provide via Jodo.

Anything I should check in my config ? Mail relay is enabled for the account... As you can see in the transcript below, the sender's email client attempted to send to the main server, got refused, then to the mail relay, but got back "that domain isn't allowed to be relayed" and was kicked back by that server too... I'd really like to get this working and to know if other people are having the same issue or solved the same issue..

Doh... ?(

Any other resellers have a similar problem....if so can you point me in the right direction?

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <user@client_domain.com>

----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to mail.myResellerDomain.com.:
>>> DATA
<<< 451 qq write error or disk full (#4.3.0) ... while talking to mail2.m****here.biz.:
>>> RCPT To:<user@client_domain.com>
<<< 553 sorry, that domain isn't allowed to be relayed thru this MTA
(#5.7.1)
550 <user@client_domain.com>... User unknown

 

[Yash]

Yes it should. And it did go active in the last 10 minutes (the backup server)

However, the transition was not automatic. OIn Jan 5th, when we do our transparent migration we'll also be introducing automated fail-over

Today's incident was caused by a cp server process that corrupted the control files (we had to restore them from backup). We are keeping a close eye on the cp server but to ensure 100% stability of the mail server, we will be moving it off the cp server on Jan 5th.

 

[bob_hog]

Ahhh Ok...I thought the mail relay was always running there and would always automatically catch the emails if they were undeliverable to the main server due to some sort of issue...thanks for clearing that up for me Yash...

I'm excited about the new mail server...hopefully that will lead to a level or reliability acceptable to my clients.

 

[Yash]

The mail server wasn't accepting emails for approximately 30 minutes before the backup mail server kicked in and we corrected the issue

Once again I appologize for the same. Mail issues that affect incoming mail are very rare here at JodoHost, but considering the fact that the last incident was only 2 weeks ago, I understand the concern and would like to reassure everyone that our team is keeping a very close eye on the mail system and we won't let another incident occur till the planned migration

 

[AaronHoc]

The mail server wasn't accepting emails for approximately 30 minutes before the backup mail server kicked in and we corrected the issue

Once again I appologize for the same. Mail issues that affect incoming mail are very rare here at JodoHost, but considering the fact that the last incident was only 2 weeks ago, I understand the concern and would like to reassure everyone that our team is keeping a very close eye on the mail system and we won't let another incident occur till the planned migration

good to know you can turn on problems, so they happen ...

 

[SubSpace]

Yes it should. And it did go active in the last 10 minutes (the backup server)
However, the transition was not automatic. OIn Jan 5th, when we do our transparent migration we'll also be introducing automated fail-over.

I must say the way it's configured now is extremely unprofessional and wrong. A backup SMTP server should always accept mail, not just when it's told to, or even if it automatically 'kicks in'. If there is an MX record for that server, it should accept mail, simple.

The secondary mailserver could be contacted instead of the primary server for any number of reasons. If the secondary fails with a permanent error, mail will bounce, as happened here. The way it's implemented right now people are better off having Mail Relay disabled.

 

[Yash]

I must say the way it's configured now is extremely unprofessional and wrong. A backup SMTP server should always accept mail, not just when it's told to, or even if it automatically 'kicks in'. If there is an MX record for that server, it should accept mail, simple.

SubSpace, if that configuration was possible immediately, it would have been done. Due to issues however in our current setup, that hasn't been possible. Hence we are going to be ensuring that this issue is resolved and automatic fail-over is available from Jan 5th.