Newbie Questions - SBS 2011, A/MX records and IP addresses

_Kaiser_

Hi there,

I'm pretty new to the whole hosting/Exchange/MX records side of things - my background has been Deskside Support, Windows Server/AD admin and so on but I've never really had a chance to play with the e-mail/web side as there's always been an existing solution/dedicated support/outsourced wherever I've worked.

Which is why I'm messing with it now at home I have setup a SBS 2011 server on a Hyper-V box that I use to run my Home network and I've configured it to use my newly purchased domain.com address that I bought from yourselves over the weekend.

After a bit of trial and error and reading forums etc I finally got the in-built Exchange server to accept incoming mail (turned out I hadn't realised I needed an A record for my prefix.domain.com entry as well as an MX)

Anyway, now the server is working as required and can send/receive mails from the web as well as internally. The problem though is I'm with UPC and don't have a static IP so when/if the modem reboots, Exchange will drop out too until I update the hosting records.

Normally I've used a dyndns hostname for getting at my machine externally but can something like this be done with your own setup or is there a workaround other than getting a fixed IP address? (as I gather UPC don't provide them for residential customers)

Any suggestions much appreciated - and remember I'm new to this so go easy

Cheers

pizzahead77

You should be able set up a Dynamaic DNS hostname with whoever and enter it into the first MX record in the Blacknight account. I'd advise you to also purchase a backup mx service (NO-IP do one at a reasonable cost) in case the DDNS service hasn't updated your IP address in time and you'd lose emails.

Also UPC do not renew their dynanic ip addresses very often - you can have the same IP address for months on end.

Are you using a router that supports DDNS or planning on a client application on the server?

_Kaiser_

pizzahead77 wrote: »

You should be able set up a Dynamaic DNS hostname with whoever and enter it into the first MX record in the Blacknight account. I'd advise you to also purchase a backup mx service (NO-IP do one at a reasonable cost) in case the DDNS service hasn't updated your IP address in time and you'd lose emails.

Also UPC do not renew their dynanic ip addresses very often - you can have the same IP address for months on end.

Are you using a router that supports DDNS or planning on a client application on the server?

Cheers for the reply

Yes I'm using a Buffalo Wireless-N router that natively supports updating a DynDns account so that's what I've used so far.

I did try to enter that into the "Record Data" field of the MX entry but it runs out of space? Syntax is myhostname.dyndns.org, but it only accepts as far as myhostname.dyndns - if you get what I mean?

pizzahead77

Strange - I was able to input a hostname of 25 characters in length into an MX record in my control panel and have it accepted

How many characters are in your hostname including any periods.

_Kaiser_

pizzahead77 wrote: »

Strange - I was able to input a hostname of 25 characters in length into an MX record in my control panel and have it accepted

How many characters are in your hostname including any periods.

I'm probably doing it wrong, the way I have it entered now is:

Record host: prefix.mydomain.com
Record type: MX
Record data: my external IP

... and this works fine.

So what I presume I need to change is:

Record host: prefix.mydomain.com
Record type: MX
Record data: my dyndns hostname

... where the dyndns hostname is 19 characters total

mneylon

An MX record has to be a hostname not an IP

If you want to create a hostname ie. an A record then you should do that first before using it as an MX record

_Kaiser_

Blacknight wrote: »

An MX record has to be a hostname not an IP

If you want to create a hostname ie. an A record then you should do that first before using it as an MX record

Ah see this is where my inexperience with this side of things is getting me

I currently have it set like this..


A
mydomain.com.
my external IP


A
www.mydomain.com.
my external IP


A
prefix.mydomain.com.
my external IP


MX
prefix.mydomain.com.
10 my external IP


If I PM'd you my details, is there a way you could have a look at what I have set up now and recommend/make any changes necessary?

mneylon

The last part is wrong

If you use dig on a "normal" domain you'd get back something like this:

michele$ dig mx michele.me

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3 <<>> mx michele.me
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 8281
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;michele.me.			IN	MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
michele.me.		899	IN	MX	30 siracusa.mneylon.com.

;; Query time: 555 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Mon Jul 16 18:13:34 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 64

The MX record has to tell DNS two things:
1 - the domain name (or hostname) for which it handles mail. In the example above the domain is michele.me
2 - the hostname of the server that will handle email. In the example above the hostname for the inbound mail server is set to siracusa.mneylon.com

an MX record CANNOT be an IP address - it has to be a hostname

_Kaiser_

OK "dig" is a new one - remember, newbie at this

If I read your example then, do I change the MX entry on the Control Panel on your site to..

MX
mydomain.com.
10 prefix.mydomain.com

Is that correct? How do i get around the need for an IP in the other entries - or can I?
Again, it does seem to work as I currently have it even though it's wrong?

Again apologies if these are simple/basic questions - do you guys have any step-by-step/setup guide (with examples) I could refer to?

Cheers

mneylon

You're correct about the MX settings ..

You need an IP address for every A record