Customer wants mail to go to their Exchange Server

Scenario:
Customer no longer wants mail to go to the shared mail servers but would like it redirected directly to his exchange server.

Solution:
Firstly you need the static IP address of your customers Exchange server, once you have this login to that customers CP.

Once logged in go to Domain Settings / Domain Info - If applicable select the domain you want to edit then select DNS configuration.

In the DNS config screen click on the link "Add DNS A record" (if this option is not available then you will need to edit the plan the user is on and enable "Custom DNS Record".

On the screen that is loaded enter a relevant name (exchange is always good to use!) and in the Data field add the customers IP address then press submit.

Once submitted you will return to the DNS config page where you will see the A record that you have just added, from here click on the "Add DNS MX record" link

On the screen that is loaded leave the name field blank, in the first Data field add a priority* and in the second, larger, Data field add the name of the previosuly created A record (so if you called the record exchange then you will put exchange.domain.com) then submit.

Once submitted you will return to the DNS config page where you will see the MX record that you have just added, once this has been done then your customer will start to receive mail direct to there mail server.

*priority is a number set to determine where mail goes to and in what order, lowest number first. Default for our mail servers is 10. If your customers require a backup so that if they have a problem with there exchange server then mail is picked up by our servers then we would reccomend that you set the priority of the nw record to 5 this way if a failure occurs mail will still be collected, the customer will need to use a POP3 downloader on there exchange server to pickup the missed mail. If the customer doesnot require any failover then you can remove the default MX records and set the priority to the default of 10.

*You can’t add MX records directly by referencing an IP address as MX records can’t contain IP addresses within their DNS entries. In order to add the custom mail record we would need to add an A record to the DNS. From this A record we would then reference the MX record.

Example:

Prerequisites:

A)    Our custom mail server is on the IP address: 123.456.789.101 and this is our exchange server.

B)     The domain name is mydomain.com

1)      First add an A record: 

Our A record would need to point to 123.456.789.101 with the alias. Therefore we will call the alias: exch.mydomain.com to point to 123.456.789.101.

DNS A records are added by clicking on the “Add DNS A Record” Link. 

2)      Then add the MX record:

       Our MX record will be referenced as mydomain.com. Therefore we would add the MX record as: mydomain.com to point to exch.mydomain.com.

DNS MX records are added by clicking on the “Add DNS MX Record” Link.


DNS configuration Zone: mydomain.com

Name                                 TTL                             Class   Type   Data
                                                Built in A records

 mydomain.com             86400                          IN        A         [IP Address]
*mydomain.com            86400                          IN        A         [IP Address]     

Restore default A records 

Custom A Record

exch.mydomain.com   86400                          IN        A          123.456.789.101

Add DNS A Record

                                                                Built in MX records

mydomain.com 86400                          IN       MX 10 mail.mydomain.com

Restore default MX records

                                                                Custom MX records 
mydomain.com            86400                          IN       MX 1 exch.mydomain.com

Add DNS MX Record


                                Built in CNAME records

Restore default CNAME records

                Built in TXT records 

Restore default TXT records


Link:
logacall.co.uk/index.php?action=kb&print=1



Comments  

[ + ]
Mixed Client Mail Server and Central POP3
Jon Dobell [2007-11-27]

[ + ]
Miixed Client Mail Server and Central POP3
MikeB [2007-04-20]