How do I set up an off-site mail server?

[JoeyAngrisano]

I've got a client that wants to host with me however they want to run their own off-site mail server. I've never set this up before using Plesk (7.5.6) for Windows and I was wondering if anyone might be able to point me in the right direction.

Since I won't be hosting the mail server but I will be the NS, I'm assuming my MX records will need to point to the correct server. The current offsite MX records are:

0 mx1.mysuperpageshosting.com. [TTL=14400] IP=64.29.145.105 (No Glue) [TTL=60523] [US]
20 mx2.mysuperpageshosting.com. [TTL=14400] IP=64.29.145.110 (No Glue) [TTL=60523] [US]
30 mx3.mysuperpageshosting.com. [TTL=14400] IP=64.29.145.111 (No Glue) [TTL=60523] [US]
40 mx4.mysuperpageshosting.com. [TTL=14400] IP=64.29.145.112 (No Glue) [TTL=60523]

So I think I understand the basic idea here however I'm unable to enter these settings when editing the DNS records for the account. It only lets me apply x.domain.com for mx records.

Can anyone offer any insight? I just found out about this and they want to go live this weekend.

Thanks

 

[JoeyAngrisano]

Just a quick bump.

 

[nickbrown]

I'm having a problem following your post so lets assume your domain is myhost.com and your client is client.net

You will need to replace the existing A record mail.client.net with the IP address the client has provided of their new email server.

The MX record for your client will then need to point to the mail.client.net record with the highest priority.

In the event your client has multiple mail servers (Redundancy, etc) you simply create additional MX records with lower priorities.

Nick.

 

[JoeyAngrisano]

Let me see if I can clarify. My client's domain name is client.com and their current mail server is Verizon.net while their current web host is oldhost.com. As it's set up now oldhost.com serves up their website but not their mail. That's handled by Verizon. Moving forward they'd like this same exact setup with our company newhost.com.

I'm using Plesk and am mildy familiar with editing DNS however I don't do many custom setups and have never edited the DNS to run off-site for mail. With that said I'm certain that what I need to do is edit both the A record as well as the MX record for their account.

Following your advice then, I'd need to create an MX record of mail.client.com with a priority of "Very High". However to do this I need to enter a mail exchanger. What would the settings be for this?

Likewise I'll need to define an A record. This would be mail.client.com with the IP address of 64.29.145.111 (which is the IP pf Verizon.net).

Am I on the right track?

 

[JoeyAngrisano]

Here's the proposed DNS for the domain:

123.123.123.123 / 24 PTR Client.com.
ftp.Client.com. CNAME Client.com.
mail.Client.com. A 64.29.145.111
Client.com. A 123.123.123.123
Client.com. MX (10) mail.Client.com.
Client.com. NS ns1.newhost.com.
Client.com. NS ns2.newhost.com.
mssql.Client.com. A 123.123.123.123
sitebuilder.Client.com. A 123.123.123.123
webmail.Client.com. A 123.123.123.123
www.Client.com. CNAME Client.com.

 

[nickbrown]

Originally posted by digisquid
Here's the proposed DNS for the domain:

Yep, that looks good.

Edit. Providing the IP you have set as the mail A record is correct. I notice its their third priority in your original post but now it will become priority one.

 

[JoeyAngrisano]

Good catch. Not sure why I used the third priority for the new records. It's fixed now for the first priority IP in the A record and the first priority in the mx record.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[JoeyAngrisano]

Okay well I flipped the switch yesterday and changed the DNS. It looks like it's going to work except for a security issue with mailenable. Here's the error I'm getting when trying to send mail to one of the addresses on the account via an email address not using that domain name:

Diagnostic code: smtp;503 This mail server requires authentication when attempting to send to a non-local e-mail address.

 

[nickbrown]

I'm fairly new to MailEnable but if you disable mail for that particular domain you should be right. Check that it doent automatically remove the MX and Mail A records for you though.

I'd assume the problem is that MailEnable still belives it is hosted locally but then check its MX record and flips out.

 

[JoeyAngrisano]

Ironically I *just* did that out of frustration and I think it actually worked. Thanks for the advice however.

We'll see how this works out.