An MX, or Mail Exchanger record, is a DNS record pointing to the server that is responsible for handling e-mail for a given domain.
To point domain.com domain name to Mail Server with 123.45.67.89 IP address, the following two records should be created:
domain.com IN MX 10 mail.domain.com.
mail.domain.com IN A 123.45.67.89
where "10" is a preference. This is how mail records are setup for Intermedia hosted domains.
The preference is used when more than one MX record is entered for any single domain name that is using more than one mail server. In this case the preference number indicates the order in which the mail servers should be used. This enables the use of primary and backup mail servers.
For example, if you are using three different mail server for one domain.com domain name:
domain.com IN MX 10 mail1. domain.com.
domain.com IN MX 10 mail2. domain.com.
domain.com IN MX 20 mail3. domain.com.
the 10 versus the 20, is a way to set load sharing and priority between multiple mail servers for a domain. The lower preference number is the higher priority. Two MX records with the same priority will share the workload (typically used in large ISP mail server installations). The server with the higher preference number will be contacted only if the servers with lower preference number are unavailable (this is typically used for backup mail servers).
Important: When SPAM Filter gets installed on your account, an MX record is added for each of your domain names that use Intermedia Mail Server. The MX record has priority "5", point to Intermedia SPAM Filtering Server and can be found in 'Services > MS Exchange Server 2007 > Domain Names' section.
Exchange 2007 customers: your DNS records can also be used to configure the Autodiscover feature, which will assist you in setting up Microsoft Outlook. Please refer to the Knowledge Base Article "What do I need to do to use the Outlook 2007 AutoConnect (AutoDiscovery) feature?" for the instructions on how to make necessary DNS changes. |
