Backup FTP Space; Backup MX

[retep]

Hi. Capping off a few busy weeks of work, we are launching two more early access/beta services....

Backup FTP space: this will let you store backups on a a remote server using FTP.

We would like to offer access to the backup space via rsync/ssh. But we are still looking at ways we can do that and maintain good security. So that access may come later if anyone is interested.

We are still trying to determine what amount of backup space we should provide (for free). What would suit you?

Backup MX: We configure a server to accept email for your domain. When your primary mail server is down, email will go to our server. Our server will try to forward the email to your server (repeating delivery attempts until your server comes back up).

We can do this for one or more (reasonable number) of email domains.

If you would like to try out either of these services just pop in a support ticket (https://rimuhosting.com/ticket/startticket.jsp) and note which service.

For the backup email we will need to know the email domains.

For the backup space we will need to have a preferred <8 char username and password for your login.

Once we are happy with the way these services are working we will be adding an automated interface to get things setup in the RimuHosting control panel.

Edit: both services are now accessible via the control panel. No need for a support ticket.

[raintonr]

Hi,

While it's commendable to offer backup MX I'm not convinced this is a good idea. Here's why:

I use a lot of dnsbl entries and milter sender (http://www.milter.info/milter-sender/index.shtml) on my primary MX.

In the past, have had a backup MX without these features available. Now... Mr Spammer comes along, gets a reject from primary. No worries he connects to backup and voila, his spam is accepted.

Backup tries to send message to primary, who rejects the mail for the same reason of course. Oh dear, now we have 1000s (litereally!) of spamed messages on the backup.

In the end, the backup gives up and rejects the mail. Only most of the time it came from a dodgy address of course, so that reject mail fails and it creates a delivery failure that ends up being sent to the primary. Oh dear, instead of a mailbox full of spam, you end up with one full of reject messages.

So now, I have sendmail running on primary and backup boxes. Both configured with the same dnsbl lists and milters. Works just fine.

Cheers,

Robin

[retep]

good points.

We're taking a look at that mail filter. It may be something we could run on our backup mx prior to accepting mail.

Also, bear in mind that the backup mx is only going to be used while your primary mx is down. Which should be a small proportion of the time - all things going well :) Maybe getting the odd bounce email during the times the backup is operating is acceptable given the upside (valid mail will be received and delivered).

[raintonr]

You say, "...backup mx is only going to be used while your primary mx is down."

Well, if it's listed in the MX records I can verify: spammers will use your backup MX all the time, regardless of the state of the primary!

So the only way to stop what I said happening is tell the backup MX to reject everything when it thinks the primary is up. Not very smart for any number of reasons!

Either way, even my teenie little VPS rejects 100s of spam messages a day. Without this stuff on the backup MX you're gonna get a lot of trash with just a couple of hours outage.

[luke]

I use duplicity http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/ for remote backups, so either FTP or SSH works (although off-network i clearly prefer ssh). I would want to see at least 2-5GB offered, on a 4GB VPS i'm using about 1.5GB for mail, web, and database storage, plus backup would want space for at least a few days incremental backups.

[luciano]

I don't have big amounts of spam to filter. Instead, I think that a backup MX is a must. So I think that if you can provide it, you will make your service better. Backup MX is one of the very few things that I'd like to get in a pro hosting and it is not available here at the moment.

FTP backup might be another good news (but... isn't backup space already available with some plans?)

Let us know how it's going!

[retep]

Hi. The FTP backup space is now 'live' and in the control panel. See http://rimuhosting.com/howto/backupspace.jsp for details.

We're working on integrating the backup email next.

Cheers, Peter

[SpaceAdmiral]

I've decided to take advantage of the backup MX dealie.

I'm a little unclear about it, however, since when I set up the domains I want to be included for backup, it says
Then add another MX record on your DNS server for your email domain. Use a 'high' priority number (e.g. 50) so that the record will not be your default mail server record. Use backupmx.rimuhosting.com as the mail server name. Note: sender's email servers sort your email servers in order of lowest priority number (typically 0) to the highest then attempt delivery in that order.

But when I go to to add another MX record on my DNS server (using Rimu's DNS server), there's no option for 'priority'. There is an option for 'order'. . . but it has numbers 1st through 5th, not 0 through 50.

Am I correct in assuming that order 5th is the same as priority 50?

[retep]

any number higher than your main mx server will do. 5 should be fine.