[tech] UWA Central Email Gateway service - home stretch.

[David Adam]

Please assign this incident to ITS Networks.

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, John Ludovico wrote:
> In order to improve the email gateway service we are in the process of 
> replacing the aged email gateways with new Ironport devices. These will 
> offer better resiliency, reduce the amount of SPAM received from 
> external sources and increase the reliability of the email service. 
> Equally important will be the ability of this architecture to assist in 
> reducing the blacklists applied to the University caused by compromised 
> mail servers on campus or those utilizing UWA address space.

At UCS' request, the UCC implemented some software to ensure that 
spam-tagged mail was not delivered outside the University border by our 
servers. Unfortunately, this broke a couple months back, so the fact that 
this will be handled by central services is good news.

> For Incoming mail In order to filter incoming SPAM as per the university 
> email policy, we are using the central core routers to redirect incoming 
> mail through the email gateways. This method has caused problems with 
> network stability. As part of the project we have been asking that 
> configuration changes at our customer end are focused at directing this 
> incoming mail to the Ironport gateways. This can be achieved by listing 
> them as the primary MX records for the email domain.
> 
> For reference, email domains that have been moved over will have MX 
> records that contain:
> 
>      IN MX 10 mail-ext-in1.uwa.edu.au.
>      IN MX 10 mail-ext-in2.uwa.edu.au.

Should we keep our mail server in as secondary MXes? If not, what 
determines the server to which mail is delivered by the Ironports?

> For Outgoing Mail:
> >From a configuration perspective, in order to filter outgoing SPAM as 
> >per the University email policy, we are using the central routers to 
> >redirect outgoing mail through the email gateways. This method has 
> >caused problems with network stability. As part of the improvements 
> >promised by the Ironport gateways, ITS will be asking that all outgoing 
> >email is explicitly sent to the load balanced service instance, 
> >"antivirus.uwa.edu.au".

Toivo got in touch and asked us to do this, I think, and we have the 
relayhost defined in our systems.

David Adam
University Computer Club Wheel Member
zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au