How do I setup an MX record for a sub-domain?

Question

Update - GoDaddy said they don't provide support for custom MX records. I gave up and we just setup an MX record on another domain.

I am hitting a road block in assistance with GoDaddy in setting up an MX record correctly and tired of waiting "24 to 48 hours" for propagation. I am going to describe this question in relation to the GoDaddy interface and use "domain.com" instead of our real domain. This may be a more general DNS question or something just peculiar to GoDaddy's interface -- I don't know yet.

We are setting up new bulk email software for a hosted email product we offer. The bulk email sends out from a different server than our company email and we need to have bounce backs for bulk jobs come back to the bulk server. This requires that we have an MX record setup for that bulk email server. This domain/mx record has been setup as a "sub-domain" of our main domain as "mail2.domain.com".

Below is the current setup at GoDaddy and a description of what we have tried. The problem is in relation to the MX record and Goes To "mail2.domain.com".

A Records

Host     Points to
@        ###.###.##.154
mail     ###.###.##.150
mail2    ###.###.##.158

MX Records

Priority    Host                Goes To
10          mail2.domain.com    mail2.domain.com
0           @                   mail.domain.com

I have tried different variations for the Host value for mail2.domain.com with no luck. GoDaddy advised me on the phone last week to use "mail2" then their interface says to use "mail2.". These didn't work so I change it about 6 hours ago to be the full domain "mail2.domain.com" with no success yet. I called them and they said the changes I made were good, which conflicts to their original adivce. Everytime I make changes I wait a day or two to be sure whether they will work so this takes a long time to go by trial and error.

Does anyone know definitively how this should be setup?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi, you setup may have a lot of undelivered meils due to "reverse DNS", anyway here goes

say your email server is 111.222.333.444, then you create the a record with godaddy as

a emailserver.mydomain.com 111.222.333.444, then make sure tou can reach this server from the outside as emailserver.mydomain.com.

then add an mx and point to emailserver.mydomain.com and set priority (5,10...etc).

The problem faced in your situation is, another server (different server than our company email) is trying to send as your domain, [email protected], but when RDNS is done, the IP shows as the other company.

What you can do is create SPF record with the IP of your mail server and the other company mail server ip.

As for the DNS propogation, that's up to godaddy. Avoid changing too frequently as they have an algorithim, which is probably moving you down in the queue. I've used their DNS for newsletter application without any trouble.

Thanks

Answer 2

The only concern I see above are issues relating to SPF and RDNS, since the server is not yours (sending). to verify your MX is correctly set try this,

open command prompt

type

nslookup enter set type=mx enter mydomain.com

you should see the MX mail servers listed in the order of preference 5,10...

also, try telnet the A record to the server

telnet my emailserver.domain.com 25 enter

should give you the emailserver welcome prompt.

Answer 3

It should be this:

Priority    Host        Goes To
10          mail2       mail2.domain.com

The way you have it currently means mail will be routed to the server if sent to a literal (which you can perform an NSLOOKUP to verify):

[email protected]

Setting a host of "mail2" means mail is being sent to

[email protected]

And setting a host of "@" means mail is sent to

[email protected]