Multiple pointers to one address?

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jim

Is it possible to assign more than one IP address to a pointer? In my
Exchange network, we use an alias of smtp.company.com that points to one of
our primary smtp gateways. Anybody that needs an smtp server to send mail,
we just defer them to the alias. They never need to know the actual server
name or address.

The other day the Internet Mail Service hung on this primary smtp gateway.
Consequently, anybody using smtp.company.com could no longer send mail to
the Internet. My question is, is there a way to point smtp.company.com to
ALL THREE of our smtp gateways? It might be in sort of a round-robin load
balancing way, or perhaps with a specific cost assigned to each of the three
addresses so that if one failed, the next one would take over.

Or, perhaps i could create one alias that points to three different FQDN's
(that is, the Exchange server names).

If it can be done, does anyone know of specific TechNet articles that
explain how?

Thanks in advance!
 
In
jim said:
Is it possible to assign more than one IP address to a pointer? In my
Exchange network, we use an alias of smtp.company.com that points to
one of our primary smtp gateways. Anybody that needs an smtp server
to send mail, we just defer them to the alias. They never need to
know the actual server name or address.

The other day the Internet Mail Service hung on this primary smtp
gateway. Consequently, anybody using smtp.company.com could no longer
send mail to the Internet. My question is, is there a way to point
smtp.company.com to ALL THREE of our smtp gateways? It might be in
sort of a round-robin load balancing way, or perhaps with a specific
cost assigned to each of the three addresses so that if one failed,
the next one would take over.

Or, perhaps i could create one alias that points to three different
FQDN's (that is, the Exchange server names).

If it can be done, does anyone know of specific TechNet articles that
explain how?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

You can create three records named smtp and give each record one of the
three IP addresses then enable round robin on the DNS server. DNS will
alternately hand out the IP addresses.
Unfortunately there may still be times when clients cannot access the mail
gateway if it is down, because unlike mail servers that use MX records and
access by the priority given to the MX, clients will not query for MX
records.
It will sort of balance the load by giving different clients different IP
addresses for the same name.
 
You would need to delete the alias record you currently have for smtp.company.com. Then create three host records by the same name, smtp.company.com
pointing each record to one of the IP addresses of the actual gateways.

Thank you,
Mike Johnston
Microsoft Network Support
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