Hi Rich,
 
10 Points for quick thinking, but Round Robin DNS is BAD BAD BAD  - for nearly everything.
 
Why? Because it doesn't do health checks or test responses. (just ask your own NetCache guys, Brian or Kurt or someone, about why they recommend L4-7 switches rather than RRDNS for load balancing web servers).
 
If you have only one mailhost listed on the filer, it will only make one attempt to send the autosupport email. If that hostname is rotated via RRDNS to multiple real servers, then if one of those real servers fails 1/N autosupport emails (where N is the number of real servers) will fail to go anywhere. If that happens to be a critical message (i.e. major component failure or overheating), you don't want to be responsible for the message not getting through.
 
Using multiple mailhosts in the list on the filer itself is much safer.
 
regards,
 
Alan McLachlan
Senior Systems Engineer
Storage Management Solutions
NetAppCA#0000019, FCNE
 
ASI Solutions
www.asi.com.au
Ph +61 2 6230 1566
Fax +61 2 6230 5343
Mobile +61 428 655644
e-mail amclachlan@asi.com.au
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Borders, Rich [mailto:Rich.Borders@netapp.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 28 January 2003 5:48 AM
To: 'Walter Ellinthorpe'; Chris Thompson
Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; david.lugo@unitedmessaging.com
Subject: RE: Can Autosupport use multiple MailHosts?

Round robin dns would work also.
 
 

Network Appliance
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rborders@netapp.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Ellinthorpe [mailto:walter.ellinthorpe@unitedmessaging.com]
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 12:33 PM
To: Chris Thompson
Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; david.lugo@unitedmessaging.com
Subject: Re: Can Autosupport use multiple MailHosts?

Thanks,

One more Question: the only way I was able to get autosupport to work  when I set these filers up was to have an entry in the /etc/hosts file looking something like this....
192.168.1.16    SMTP-A     mailhost
So, to use multiple smtp hosts, would I need to have entries like....
192.168.1.16    SMTP-A     mailhost
192.168.1.17    SMTP-B     mailhost
192.168.1.18    SMTP-C     mailhost
192.168.1.19    SMTP-D     mailhost
Thanks again,

--Walter



Chris Thompson wrote:
walter.ellinthorpe@unitedmessaging.com (Walter Ellinthorpe) writes:
  
    I have NetApp Filers from Chicago to South Carolina and I use 
Autosupport to keep track of the health and happiness of each one.  They 
all have multiple SMTP servers on their local LAN.

   1. Can I configure the Filers to use multiple SMTP gateways (e.g. if
      SMTP-A fails, try SMTP-B.  If SMTP-B fails try SMTP-C... etc.)?
   2. If this CAN be done, how do I configure the Filers to do this?
    

options autosupport.mailhost SMTP-A,SMTP-B,SMTP-C

The na_options(1) man page says there can be up to five hosts in the
comma-separated list. I have used it successfully with three.

Chris Thompson
Email: cet1@cam.ac.uk
  

-- 
===============================================================
|   Walter Ellinthorpe   United Messaging  Field Engineer     |
| Walter.Ellinthorpe@UnitedMessaging.com (W) 703-234-5305     |
| 13800 Coppermine Road Suite 279   Herndon, VA 20171         |



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