[TriLUG] seeking advice for a bullet-proof mail server

Ryan Leathers Ryan.Leathers at globalknowledge.com
Fri Nov 5 13:19:44 EST 2004


Thanks for the follow-up question Matt.

Certain systems will send mail to customers, and their responses to
predetermined mailboxes will be parsed for further action or read by humans
in some cases.  

Another system which can only speak SMTP will send messages with distinct
subject fields.  I will need to hand off incoming mail which matches an
array of subject fields to a home-brew application which parses, talks to a
database, fires off some jobs, and finally responds with another email.

I know its ugly.  Its not my choice.  If I could do JMS I would.  SMTP is
what I'm stuck with.
This is obviously asynchronous, but I can only afford minutes - not hours of
delay, which is why MX weighting is not a practical solution for me.
Perhaps Aaron J's suggestion of putting all my eggs in one REALLY good
basket is the right move, but I'm hoping for something better.  I know I
could get the access behavior I want out of LVS, but I'm not sure how to get
the data shared by both MTAs without a headache should hardware fail.  That
is, unless I add a separate storage subsystem, which brings me back to my
original post.    


-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Pusateri [mailto:mpusateri at wickedtrails.com]
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 11:04 AM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: RE: [TriLUG] seeking advice for a bullet-proof mail server


On Fri, November 5, 2004 10:34 am, Ryan Leathers said:
> My problem there Joseph is that I won't have the luxury of waiting.
> In a
> nutshell, this mail server is a component of a business process
> automation
> plan.  Some number of the mail messages arriving will be the type that
> must
> be delivered in near real time.  That's why I mentioned using LVS to
> distribute incoming mail, or MX balancing. Its not about performance,
> just
> reliability.  If a mail server dies I have to keep chugging even while
> it is
> being recovered.  Queuing will not suffice except for the normal
> customer
> mail.
>

Ryan,

Question,  It sounds like you have two theoretically different types
of mail being recieved.  The first type is normal mail that everyone
gets and can read whenever the recipient likes.  The second sounds
like mail that will be acted up by some process instead of a person
hence the automation part.  If this scenario is true, can you identify
the email that needs to be automated prior to it hitting your door? 
What i mean is, does it go to a certain email address or have a
specific subject etc?

Matt Pusateri

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