Backup Mail Server Questions

[Toomas Aas]

> From:          Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com>

> First off, what does setting up backup DNS/mail gain the end user?  Unless
> you have mirrors on radically different networks, of things like WWW and
> mail, backup DNS doesn't really accomplish anything.  If the net
> connection goes down, you're offline anyway, so who cares if DNS still
> works?

This is only true if your DNS server is behind the same network 
connection with your other services. We recently had a situation where 
one of our mail sub-domains and one pretty important web application 
were out of operation FOR A MONTH because the external contractor who 
handles DNS for this sub-domain had "forgotten" their DNS server into 
another network and it was disconnected. Until they sorted out the 
mess, from the end-users POV things basically didn't work, even though 
the mail and web servers themselves were fine.

So, secondary DNS *is important*. It is also very easy to set up (at 
least with BIND).
--
Toomas Aas | toomas.aas at raad.tartu.ee | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/
* I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.