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License question re: leaving installation on old server
Question asked by Chris Bertelli - 2/12/2015 at 2:28 PM
Answered
I was about to migrate my smartermail 10.x to a new server.  I planned to leave the old server online to be a disaster backup, among other things.  Is it legal to leave smartermail installed on the old server but turned off (startup set to disabled in the services manager)?  That way, if the new server has a melt-down of some sort and stops working, I could revert to the old server in the time it takes to update DNS and restart the service.

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CCWH Replied
As far as I am aware the license will become void on the backup server 30 days after migration... Turned off would make no difference as it's done by the new IP address upon reactivation
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Employee Replied
Employee Post Marked As Answer
Hi Chris! 
 
You can leave SmarterMail on the old server, as long as your stop the SmarterMail service or revert your installation to the free edition. A license can only be active on one server. To act as a disaster backup, you can set up SmarterMail as a Backup MX Server. If you're running the Enterprise edition, you could also set up Failover to act as a hot standby. Here is some more information about both of these options:
 
 
I hope this helps! Please let me know if this answers your question so I can change the status of this thread accordingly.
 
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Joe Wolf Replied
For backup MX (which I no longer recommend) you can use the free version of SmarterMail or any of the free backup MX services. In reality they cause more problems than anything else. Nearly 100% of all messages sent to a backup MX are SPAM. If your primary goes down you should have 4 days to get it back up without missing an inbound message per the RFC's. It's my opinion that backup or secondary MX servers should be abandoned.
Thanks, -Joe
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Steve Reid Replied
If you are at all concerned with missing mails from accidentally misconfigured mail server then this is not recommended. Many servers are not setup to retry for the proper length of time.
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Chris Bertelli Replied
Thank you Andrea -- that sounds good.
 
In case of disaster, where the new server goes offline for several days, what would I need to do to make Smartermail work again on the old one?  Would it be enough to just turn the service back on and update DNS, or are there specific steps to reactivate the license on the old machine?
 
My case is just a company mail server, not handling umpteen hosting clients, so half a day of no mail is OK but several days is not.  My vision was:  if the new server has a disaster (major hardware failure or hacked and must be rebuilt), and will be offline for a period of days, then I can just restart the Smartermail service on the old server, and update DNS records, and have mail going to the old server within a few hours.
 
I don't use webmail, so access to message stores on either machine is not essential.  Just need to be able to send and receive new messages.
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Employee Replied
Employee Post
As far as licensing goes, you can simply activate the installation again using the same license key. You'd then just want to be sure to stop the service or revert the install that you'd be using while recovering the original server.

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