Topic: 3 mail servers one domain

[mrkicker]

Hey guys im not sure if this can be done or is already around the forums but i cant find anything as such. What i would like to do is have 3 sme servers running in 3 diff offices. I can do the vpn thing no worries but what im not sure if i can do is have one mail server as the main mail server in office one say with a domain pointed to it then have the other 2 mail servers replicate it locally for office 2 and 3. As i would like to be using imap i dont want all the e-mail traffic going over the dsl conections if i can just have it go over it once and then be stored locally.

[hardijs]

the closest thing that comes in mind were a series of topics and howto's about high availability - plse search the forums.

OTOH I do not think that ir may be the right thing you are trying to do - in short - if you say you do not want to have the imap traffic - then in your setup it will be the sync traffic - and that will happen w or wo the users actually engaging it. Also the iMac traffic happens mostly for the new and or changed items only (or so I think - mostly that depends on mail client sw)


Could it be resolved by - say  - a subdomains - so that "engineering" goes with server1 and "accounting" live in server2

Also - how many users are there you have to take care of.
I believe that unless you have in excess of 50 users then you do not need to worry unless you have to administrate advertising agency

[mrkicker]

In response to users office one will have about 50 maybe more as it has 2 training rooms, office 2 will be about 30, it has 1 training room and office 3 will be no more than 20 i think thats if they dont want to do training down their as well which could be a future thing so i would really like to do it with 3 servers so that i dont have to keep changing things when they change their minds. and as far sd the sync traffic goes i figured that when office 1 got a new e-mail i would like it to distribute that e-mail to office 2 and 3 then any user can skip between offices as they move around a lot.

Cheers Ryan

[raem]

mrkicker

Why not just have one server at office1 as the main mail server for the main domain for all 3 offices. The other two servers at office2 & office3 can be gateway servers but do not collect mail, give server 2 & 3 different (real at cost or free) domain names. File & print sharing is done locally.

Users at all 3 offices have secure IMAP accounts on the mail server at office1, and can see their mail wherever they are.

You will have sync mail traffic using your suggested method, so I don't see any great difference having IMAP traffic between office 2 & 3 and  office1.

Configure IMAP just to read the headers and only download the message if required. The message will be in the local profile on Windows then in the event that the connection to the remote office is down.

Alternatively give each office a seperate domain name and forward mail for each domain from the main mail server at office1 to the respective server, using techniques as suggested by the vdomain panel from dungog ie mail for domain 1 processed locally, mail for domain2 delegeted to server2, mail for domain3 delegeted to server3.
Users can still read the mail on whichever server it is & wherever they are by setting up multiple secure IMAP accounts.

I have the old vdomain contrib if you want it, although dungog has withdrawn it for now as it needs more work, mentioned recently in the forums.

[meanpenguin]

In my experience, there is no real way of syncing email.
think about this.
email is copied to all the servers.
email A is deleted from server 2

sync starts, from the sync's point of view,
was email A deleted or just not copied to server 2?


Best advice would be to do a Ray suggested.
I would only add that you use web mail since it works well with IMAP clients.

Ed