listener

[sobrien]

Can you have 2 ironports clustered together and be configured as listeners on port 25?                  

[Ken Stieers]

Caveat: I don't have a clustered set of boxes, so I'm speaking based soley on reading the docs... I haven't done it...

So if I state anything incorrectly, someone please post a correction:

Clustering sets the boxes up so that the configuration is replicated, both are running "independently" in an active-active type of cluster, ie you can send traffic to both of them at the same time.  There isn't a single IP that gets passed between them...

You'd set up 2 MX records, and 2 A records pointed at these 2 boxes.

[sobrien]

Thanks for the information but can both devices in the cluster be configured as a listener or only one can be configured as a listener.

[Ken Stieers]

Both WILL be listening... on their OWN IP...

When you config one, the other gets the same config... so once you turn on a listener, BOTH will be listening...

I don't understand what you're asking...

[sobrien]

I did not set up the cluster but when i go to the GUI and look at listeners, I see both devices but with different port numbers. I was told that the consultants that came before me configured one device to use 25 and the other device 26. It was done because two listeners cannot listen on the same port. Please clarify if this is true. thanks

[Ken Stieers]

Your original question mentioned "2 ironports clustered together" which is why I went that way...

Just to be clear:

2 seperate IronPort boxes?

On seperate IP addresses?

Yes, they can both be on port 25... no reason for them NOT to be...

Do yourself a favor and don't let those "consultants" back in the building...

[Donald Nash]

They can listen on the same port, but they must have different IP addresses. Two different devices cannot share a single IP address, but two different devices on their own separate IP addresses can both listen on the same port.

Clustering only gets you configuration synchronization between devices. It does not do any sort of traffic management or load balancing. You need an external load balancer if you want that, or just multiple A and MX records in the DNS if your situation isn't sophisticated enough to warrant load balancer hardware.

++Don