Thoughts on infrastructure and outage recovery

[Edward Velo]

Originally posted by Terry
yes I can point my mx to fastmail....but then I have to rely totally on f/m
I preferred the mail forwarding then if f/m went down I would still get my mail at mailsnare.
perhaps I'm was not doing it correctly ?

When Fastmail is down, you go to ZoneEdit and change your MX to another emailprovider. Or you can temporarily use a mailforward during that time.

Of course, the mails that arrive inbetween "Fastmail goes down" and "I know Fastmail is down and I change my MX to another emailaccount and the changes are propagated" are unreachable until Fastmail is back online. Mailforwarding would indeed be better for this matter.

If we had a setting that Fastmail's SMTP wouldn't accept any mails during IMAP server outages, then the 2nd priority MX would be used (pointing to an alternative account), and you really wouldn't need a mailforwarding.

[Terry]

yes I could use a temp mail forward, I never thought of that.

I was ok this time I could still receive my mail, but I'm just thinking of future plans in case f/m keeps breaking down.

[Shazzer]

Originally posted by Edward Velo
Why don't you use MX instead of mailforwarding at ZoneEdit?

- no mail server should deny your mails that way (if you use Fastmail's SMTP)
- Fastmail's spam filtering will work better if you use MX
- mailforwarding at ZoneEdit will use bandwith at ZoneEdit, and they change you credits for that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need to have an Enhanced account in order to direct your MX records to FastMail?

I've had a FULL account for years and can't see shelling out another 20 bucks annually just to have FastMail host the MX records for a single domain with two email addresses, which is exactly what I set up over the weekend for critical personal use like immediate family, freelance clients, clubs I have leadership responsibilities in and the organizations I volunteer with.

I have the forwarding at my domain host set to both FastMail and G-Mail (for back-up), so if there's an extended F-M service outage in the future, I'll be able to access all my important (and usually time-sensitive messages) via G-mail until it blows over.

I recognize that forwarding introduces another possible point of break-down for delivery, and this set-up only provides limited redundancy, but it was cheap, fast and easy for a non-techie like myself to set up, and provides enough security for my needs.

[Edward Velo]

Originally posted by Shazzer
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need to have an Enhanced account in order to direct your MX records to FastMail?

That is correct. They only allow domain hosting for Enhanced accounts.

[snsh]

Would be nice if FM could somehow tier storage at the user level;
Enhanced user with 1GB of email probably has 20MB of new mail and 980MB of old mail.
Doesn't make sense to put it all on the same server, partition, or database.

From a management, performance, cost, and disaster-recovery point of view,
tiered storage seems like it should be win-win for everybody.

[hadaso]

Originally posted by snsh
...From a management, performance, cost, and disaster-recovery point of view,
tiered storage seems like it should be win-win for everybody.

I think for the current disaster it would have meant they had to suspend every enhanced user's IMAP access until the acount is fully restored. IMAP clients assume the server shows everything there is in the account, and this means they might later cause the server to delete recovered messages that appeared to have been deleted before they were recovered. An IMAP extension that allows the server to tell the client it has only partial access to the mailstore (and then the client can assume everything it has and is not on the server should not be considered deleted until the server says it has everything) could have enabled FastMail to allow access to partially recovered accounts.

[Shelded]

Originally posted by BritTim
I hope Fastmail sees this thread and carefully considers it.

Second important change (actually reversion to prior policy): in the event of an outage, all incoming mail for a valid userid that cannot be immediately delivered must be queued. Even with proper backup, bounce messages through lack of delivery to the Fastmail account cause unacceptable confusion.

I disagree with this element as a generality. IMO it has always bugged me that Fastmail always accepts mail, even when it can't deliver it. I'd rather they deliver it elsewhere or not take it at all. The bounces which reveal the username are worse yet. I would like the opportunity to direct the system what to do with this stuff since I have no need for a system to collect mail and sleep on it.

[Shelded]

Originally posted by Shazzer
I've had a FULL account for years and can't see shelling out another 20 bucks annually just to have FastMail host the MX records for a single domain with two email addresses

Well, maybe it's not worth it to you but Enhanced also will get you increased storage and bandwidth. But if this "premium" account is not worth it to you, feel free to recognize thta you are not the market segment this was aimed at. I like forwarding too, esp since FM is unreliable. But having FM handle the MX really makes mail zippy.

[BritTim]

Originally posted by Shelded
I disagree with this element as a generality. IMO it has always bugged me that Fastmail always accepts mail, even when it can't deliver it. I'd rather they deliver it elsewhere or not take it at all. The bounces which reveal the username are worse yet. I would like the opportunity to direct the system what to do with this stuff since I have no need for a system to collect mail and sleep on it.

I understand your point of view. Presumably, you do not use a backup account, and want your correspondents to know mail is not being delivered. I have a policy, for business users, always to have own domains and always to have a backup account. After an outage, though, they still want a complete record of all incoming and outgoing mail on their main (Fastmail) account. The effect of bouncing emails is[list=1][*]my client's correspondents are told their email is not being delivered when actually it is (highly confusing); and[*]I have the problem of trying to copy email from the backup account in a form such that the original record of input and output emails looks normal. This is not so easy when, for instance, the original email was delivered via bcc. I have had to write a program to edit the email headers to make things look right.[/list=1] The worst of this is that I still cannot find a good proactive way to deal with future outages. I may have to abandon Fastmail and solve the problems by using another service.

[Shazzer]

Originally posted by Shelded
Well, maybe it's not worth it to you but Enhanced also will get you increased storage and bandwidth. But if this "premium" account is not worth it to you, feel free to recognize that you are not the market segment this was aimed at. I like forwarding too, esp since FM is unreliable. But having FM handle the MX really makes mail zippy.

You're absolutely right, I'm not a power-user by any means. Since I have no need for the monster amount of storage and bandwith that comes with an Enhanced account, the only thing the extra $20 will buy me is e-mail hosting for a single domain and a catchall e-mail address. And that's definitely not worth the price.

I suspect I'm part of a fairly large "market segment" that isn't really addressed by FastMail's current account options. I'd gladly pay another $10 per year for one personal domain, a couple of extra aliases/personalities and additional 400M of storage (for a total of 1G). But until this account level is offered or the additional features I would actually use are available "ala carte", I'm prepared to live with forwarding.

[Edward Velo]

Originally posted by Shazzer
I suspect I'm part of a fairly large "market segment" that isn't really addressed by FastMail's current account options. I'd gladly pay another $10 per year for one personal domain, a couple of extra aliases/personalities and additional 400M of storage (for a total of 1G). But until this account level is offered or the additional features I would actually use are available "ala carte", I'm prepared to live with forwarding.

Actually, Fastmail did offer such an "a la carte" system (hosting a domain at the full level for a small extra fee per year), but in april 2006 they cancelled it, and offered to host domains at the Enhanced level only.

See http://blog.fastmail.fm/?p=546

[Shazzer]

Originally posted by Edward Velo
Actually, Fastmail did offer such an "a la carte" system (hosting a domain at the full level for a small extra fee per year), but in april 2006 they cancelled it, and offered to host domains at the Enhanced level only.

See http://blog.fastmail.fm/?p=546

I was aware of that, but at the time I didn't realize how important having my own domain e-mail would be in the event of a major service outage. Prior to last Thursday, personal domain e-mail was more about vanity than practicality as far as I was concerned, and I couldn't justify nearly doubling my e-mail costs (domain registration + annual ala carte domain hosting and alias) for a vanity purchase. I mean, $14 a year hardly qualified as a "small extra fee" when the Full account itself costs $20.

[DrStrabismus]

One thing that I find appealing about Tuffmail is that they let you host your domain, instead of having a Tuffmail address, on all their accounts.

For me the reason for having a domain is that you aren't tied-in to anything.

[Sherry]

Originally posted by Edward Velo
When Fastmail is down, you go to ZoneEdit and change your MX to another emailprovider. Or you can temporarily use a mailforward during that time.

Just a question on why not using a suggestion posted that the email would forward to an external account (during an IMAP outage) at the SMTP level by putting in an additional external address for the target instead of changing the MX?

Sherry

[Edward Velo]

Originally posted by Sherry
Just a question on why not using a suggestion posted that the email would forward to an external account (during an IMAP outage) at the SMTP level by putting in an additional external address for the target instead of changing the MX?

There is not one perfect way to make your mails more redundant, it's just another possibility. In this case I was replying to Terry's specific case (he wrote explicitly that he didn't want to point his MX to Fastmail because he didn't want to rely on Fastmail). So even in the (unlikely, I agree) event that their SMTP is down, the MX directly to Mailsnare would still work.

Also note that all those forwards are generating double traffic for your accounts (ZoneEdit for instance charges for forwarding, while they are almost free for MX). I guess the Internet became a busier place since the last Fastmail outage, because now everyone is forwarding their mails around to multiple places now ;-)