can zimbra have backup mail server?

[pheonix1t]

hello,
I'm not sure if I'm using the correct terminology regarding this question.

I have a zimbra server running at a site. What we'd like to have is a backup server in case the primary server goes down for any reason (broadband connection is broken, no power to building, etc).

The emails would automatically go to the backup server. Users can see their emails on there. When the primary server comes back online, the emails queued on the backup server automatically get sent to the primary server.

Is this possible with zimbra?

Thanks,

Oskar

[Klug]

I'm not sure this is possible.

Having a backup MX is nice (mandatory from my point of view), but it's just a MX, not a full mail server : it won't allow your users to check their mails out of it (it won't know anything about the users anyway).

If you're concerned by your primary server going down, you should go the cluster way (RedHat Cluster is the supported way, but Linux-HA + DRBD is reported to work too).

[dijichi2]

so you just want an HA cluster running over WAN with automagic failback/anti split-brain? no problem! well, no really it is a problem, sorry

mailstore replication hasn't been implemented in zimbra yet, search the forums for drbd, that's probably the closest it's been done at the moment. as you're looking for protection against building DoS that rules out SAN unless you can go down SRDF or similar route, you might look at WAN connected replicated NAS, or a replicated cluster filesystem such as oraclefs or gfs.

drbd is probably your easiest bet as it's been done already with zimbra, but it's quite crude compared to commercial offerings and you really need to know it well otherwise you risk losing data. if you're not familiar with clustering, wait for zimbra to support replicated mailspools, I think they're working on it.