Exchange and mx records, quick question

[epswat]

I have a "quick" question.

I want to use smtp for Exchange mail delivery, however the internet connection is not always reliable and sometimes goes down.

Is it possible to do the following to ensure mail messages do not get lost when the internet connection goes down...

Setup a pop3 catchall mailbox with the ISP (this is what they are using for mail at the mo).
Setup 2 mx records for the customers domain, the mx record with the higest priority points to the Exchange servers public IP address.
The second mx record points to the ISP's pop server.
Normally, mail would get delivered to the Exchange server, however if it were not contactable, then mail would get delivered to the pop mailbox @ the ISP.
The end user would then need to use another machine to pick up mail, once the internet connection is back up.

They are worried about losing mail if the internet connection goes down, but I am pretty sure you get a bounce message if the Exchange server is not contactable.

Sorry for the long post. Any comments would be most welcome.

Thanks

Elliott

 

[TheKnat]

Sounds like it would work fine. Just setup 2 MX records, one as priority '10' with exhange.yourdomain.com and one with priority '20' as pop3.isp.com.

We have to use a similar thing for sending emails to an external company who has about 10 email servers and they seem to reboot them quite often

 

[oddjob62]

Most service providers will provice what's called "Store and forward" that works on a similar principal. The store and forward server is given a lower priority than your main Exchange server. If your server goes down, email get delivered to the S&F server, and it will try to resend these to your main server at regular intervals.

TBH most mail servers will resend for quite a while (iirc Exchange will rety for 2 days). So it's no like rebooting your server will mean you lose emails.