Do I really need an MX record? (for e-mail to work)

[Daniel Ström]

>
>> All i ever hear is excuses (we have to run this ourself) but in 99%
>> that is absolutely not defendable from a  economical or practical
>> standpoint.
>
> You make absolutely no sense, especially since I have described our
> situation.
>
> We have been operating our own mail server since 1998.  It is an
> NT4-server running post.office (made by defunct software.com).  It is
> the single most reliable, most trouble-free, least resource-intensive
> piece of business infrastructure we have.  Only our 12 year old HP
> laser Jet printer comes close.  If I want to add, delete, modifiy user
> accounts, I can do it in seconds.  If I want to add/remove any  
> domains,
> user-names, IP addresses from it's blocking list, I can do it in
> seconds.  If I want to give users the ability to send/receive from
> outside the local network, I can do it in seconds.  If I want to  
> set up
> 100 separate e-mail addresses, I can do it in seconds (well, ok, maybe
> minutes).  If I want to add 100 aliases to a single address, I can do
> it.

It´s just a matter of choosing a service provider that offers those  
services, i dont see the problem here. We are running Postfix as our  
MTA for a couple of thousand customers and it works just fine and  
with our web based interface they all have the ability to add or  
remove all the settings Postifx, Cyrus, SA and ClamAV offers, its a  
no brainer.

>
> If I want to go 1, 2, 3, 6 months without even turning on the  
> screen of
> the server, I can (and have) do that too.
>
> After all that, why would I want to throw this away and have someone
> else host our e-mail?  Why would I want to pay for that, when what I
> have is already paid for?

So your time is absolutely free then? If so i would be very  
interested in hiring you on a consult basis.

>
> (and PS:  We have a copy of NAV corporate edition running on the
> server, and it intercept's 99% of viral attachments sitting in the
> spool folders so end-users never get them)
>
>> If you dont have the resources let someone else do it that has them
>> and focus on your core buisness.
>
> How did my questions about MX records turn into me not having enough
> resources to run our own mail server?  Please explain.
>

No failovers, single IP, cable modem, all of those adds up to that  
conclusion, yes.

>> In this case judging by the setup (cable modem on a single IP) i
>> would seriously doubt that running it in-house is  a wise decision.
>
> Read what I said above.  Maybe some of you (or just Daniel Ström)
> wrestle with difficult SMTP software that breaks on you on a daily
> basis, or have an organization with more than 25 employees.  Maybe
> that's what colors your impression of the difficulty in running your
> own SMTP server.   That's not my experience.  I can't believe how easy
> it was to pull our server out of our old location (ISDN, 64 dedicated
> IP net-block) and get it back on-line through a single-IP ADSL
> connection.
>
>

I was just poiting out something here that i from years of experience  
(still) belive is right. If you feel that filtering junkmail by  
removing your MX is the way to go then cool, i dont mind.

/ Daniel