Adding PowerMTA setup to Mumara

[peljuu]

Hi!

Seems like it's time to test drive PowerMTA + Mumara setup as I've heard good about it for bigger amount of email sending.

So I have two dedicated servers, the main server that used to act as Mumara server only to send emails with the email bounce system etc. which worked fine but yes indeed, going in to 500k+ emails per day there's a possibility of having your IP's / domains spamlisted anyway and that makes more work.

Now before proceeding further with the setup (before adding more IP's / domains with PMTA + Mumara integration) I'd like to make sure few things so I don't have to do double job and can proceed with the correct setup got few questions:

Server 1 has Mumara
Server 2 has PowerMTA

Please correct me with the following:

1) the IP's I set up have to be attached on the --> PowerMTA <-- server -- yes / no?

2) is the meaning of the 2nd server (PMTA server) to act as smtp server for the IP's that it added to mumara while doing my first test setup with 8 IP's 4 domains - so my Server 1 (Mumara server) doesn't act as SMTP / "real sending node" anymore after making this integration)? yes - no - further details to make this clear?

3) does those email addresses set up for the domains at the early stages of setup have to excist or can I forward them or so? (are the bounces handled somehow else, that is the big question I suppose) Asking this to know if I can just use the DNS records + reverse dns's or do I have to add the three email addresses I've used on every domain in the past Mumara-only setup (mail/reply/bounce)?

Hopefully the king kong of the emails got my questions correctly

Other than that the setup itself seemed very easy, so just gotta make all that sure before adding more IP's / domains via PMTA plugin.

Also any suggestions for the amount of IP's per domain that would be most optimal for best setup?

Thank you in advance!

 

[wasif]

Thank you Juuso for the detailed questioning.

1) the IP's I set up have to be attached on the --> PowerMTA <-- server -- yes / no?

Ans: Yes the sending IPs have to be added to your PowerMTA Server i.e. server-2.

2) is the meaning of the 2nd server (PMTA server) to act as SMTP server for the IP's that it added to Mumara while doing my first test setup with 8 IP's 4 domains - so my Server 1 (Mumara server) doesn't act as SMTP / "real sending node" anymore after making this integration)? yes - no - further details to make this clear?

Ans: Yes your second server will be the MTA server that will carry all SMTPs and Mumara will push the email packets to it for delivery. While adding a PowerMTA server in Mumara, it doesn't mean that the IPs are being added to the Mumara server, but Mumara will use this info to build your PowerMTA configuration file that carries the IPs and Forward DNS information. Mumara builds the SMTP accounts inside PowerMTA and adds them inside itself as Sending Nodes. So any email that you send from Mumara will use those Sending Nodes will be pushed to the PowerMTA server for delivery.

3) does those email addresses set up for the domains at the early stages of setup have to excist or can I forward them or so? (are the bounces handled somehow else, that is the big question I suppose) Asking this to know if I can just use the DNS records + reverse dns's or do I have to add the three email addresses I've used on every domain in the past Mumara-only setup (mail/reply/bounce)?

Ans: While adding a PowerMTA server, Mumara asks you to choose from the two methods of DSN (delivery status notification) processing

1. Use POP/IMAP method to open the bounce mailboxes and read the bounced-back emails and process them (kinda slow and just processes bounces)
2. Use PowerMTA accounting files to read the delivery statuses (fast and also gives you the status of the delivered messages along with bounces)

So if you use method 2, it's not important for Mumara that your bounce mailbox actually exists as Mumara won't be establishing connections with the bounce mail server to process the emails inside. But it's for sure important for your deliverability and reputation. As it's a part of the headers and appears in MailFrom for any email that is going out, spam agencies and recipient servers do verify the validity of the MailFrom (Return-Path/Bounce) email address, and the email gains some accreditation.



And regarding the number of IPs per domain, it varies from case to case. Believe me, if the case is all double-optin, even single IP would do the job. If it's going to be unsolicited, the mailer gauges himself if 4 IPs are going good without being listed or spammed, it doesn't work. In some cases when the mailer is being aggressive in sending quantity instead of focusing on the quality, he is burning IPs/Domains every day. So let's support if you are using 4 IPs per domain and if you're controlling your bounces and spam rate, and your IPs are performing well with a better sender score, just keep increasing the quota on daily basis instead of adding more IPs to the same set. Sometimes adding 1 fresh IP to a set of 4 warmed up IPs destroys the overall engagements. Unless you are burning your IP, you are safe to increase volume every day.

 

[vector_di]

"if you are using 4 IPs per domain" ... - What does it mean?
I don't understand how you set up mta? Do you use subdomains?
Or all 4 ip's for one domain?