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General MX Question

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Caustic

MIS
Jun 20, 2001
77
US
I have a general question about how MX records work.

I have two MX records for my company e-mail. One has a priority of 10 and the other has a priorty of 20. Each MX record points to a mail gateway (I'll call them server A and B).

The mail server with the priority of 10 (A) has been having problems. I am trying to replace it as soon as possible but in the mean time, when server A goes offline people sending from the outside are getting bounces. Despite the fact that server B is up and healthy.

My question is, when mail server A is having problems why doesn't mail instead flow to server B via the lower priorty MX record?

Is this expected behavior? I'll probably just end up giving server B's MX record a higher priority but I was just curious about how MX records are suppose to work in this situation. Thanks for any help.
 
Examine the bounces, and they should be from server B. If your MX records are configured as you say, then if a sending mail server can't reach A (offline) then it will attempt to send it to B.
 
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