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krizzo's avatar
krizzo
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jun 27, 2014

Manage SMTP traffic to multiple tiered mail servers?

I would like to start using our new F5's for managing SMTP traffic to our different SMTP server groups.

 

I have 3 groups of SMTP servers each group. Currently an HAproxy server is used to send SMTP traffic to the correct tier based on the port it receives the traffic and sends the traffic to a specific server in the tier by weighted round robin.

 

Tier1 port 2501

 

Tier2 port 2502

 

Tire3 port 2503

 

I was thinking I'll need to create 3 separate pools that will have the list of SMTP servers and have Ratio load balancing set for the pool.

 

Then create 3 virtual servers with different service ports 2501, 2502 and 2503.

 

Finally creating one VIP that all the servers can send their mail traffic.

 

Will this work or is there a better way with the F5 to implement a multi-server multi-tier SMTP setup like this?