Putting main website and mail on seperate servers using single domain

[arbayong]

My help has just been sought on a project. My organisation just its website redeveloped and hosted by a company using asp.net technology and windows server. We've lost our email services and the developer is now charging an extra 1500 US dollars to provide the email service. so we are looking for a way out.
is it possible for the main website to be on say mydomain.com to be on a windows server with ip say w.x.y.z and then the the mail server will be on say mail.mydomain.com on Ubuntu server on with ip a.b.c.d?
How can i go about making the email fully functional on the linux system using sentora without having to move the dns into sentora? That is everything points to the windows server except records required to make the email work on the linux box.

Hope i am coherent enough. once again, we have a running website on windows server but just need to email server on linux on a subdomain on the domain.

[apinto]

What you ask for is perfectly possible, however it might not be as easy as you would like to make it.
It will need a bit of tweaking and custom scripts.

[arbayong]

@Apinto,
Any hints or info that might point me in the right direction? Since the VPS doesn't contain production stuff yet, were ready to try and see where it goes.

[apinto]

I'm probably not the best guy to help you as I've never done it.
However you will need for sure a few steps:
- Point your nameservers to Sentora (or any other DNS service oyu are using).
- On the DNS setup, add the subdomain as a A Record and insert the Linux IP (this will be the mail server, right?)
- Set the MX Records for the main domain to use the Linux Server.

Now the part that I'm not sure, but I would do this:
- Install Sentora normally on the Linux server.
- Find a way to replicate the accounts:
--- One way to do this would be using MySQL Replication (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/t...n-in-mysql)
--- Probably you will need to call the Sentora Daemon using some kind of hook (take care for security here as if you implement this insecurely you can give access to your server); make the Windows Server tell the Linux server Daemon to do the same action, this way you would have the same email accounts on Linux and Windows (so users can add and remove email accounts on windows and they will be updated on the real mail server).

Please keep in mind this is just theory, was not tested and needs developing custom code.

Hope this helped you

[arbayong]

It really looks complicated for me. lol

[andy]

It really looks complicated for me. lol

If I understand correctly, you can do it in a simple way:

your requirements:
main website -> window server (existing)
mail -> handled by a mail server on linux (not existed now and you want to build it on sentora)
Domain Name Server (existing somewhere)

To achieve the above, you need the following:
1) create a linux instance
2) install sentora on it
3) setup all the necessary protection (virus scan, spam control, SSL, authentication, reverse IP, etc)
4) create a virtual domain on sentora for your company and setup the email accounts 
5) once the above 4 are done, change your domain name server MX records to point to this mail server

Good luck,

Andy

[apinto]

andy that would work...
The thing is he wants to keep accounts synced, like when you create one account in the windows server it gets created in Linux, this is the hard part.

[andy]

i see. not sure if that really the right way especially they are on two different OSs

[apinto]

Its not right. But its possible. And doable.

[arbayong]

It really looks complicated for me. lol

If I understand correctly, you can do it in a simple way:

your requirements:
main website -> window server (existing)
mail -> handled by a mail server on linux (not existed now and you want to build it on sentora)
Domain Name Server (existing somewhere)

To achieve the above, you need the following:
1) create a linux instance
2) install sentora on it
3) setup all the necessary protection (virus scan, spam control, SSL, authentication, reverse IP, etc)
4) create a virtual domain on sentora for your company and setup the email accounts 
5) once the above 4 are done, change your domain name server MX records to point to this mail server

Good luck,

Andy

Actually, Andy got me right.
I had a keyboard issue on my laptop so couldn't come here.
I am confused at point 4. create a virtual domain .... is that the same as creating my company's domain name from the domain menu or there is a special way to go about it? I haven't been able to find the meaning of virtual domain anywhere.
Also, it thought sentora automatically takes care of spam control and virus scans etc. or i am mistaken here. I just moved from vestacp and i have to admit sentora seems overly complicated to me at this moment