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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
 Posted - 03/21/2008 : 1:44:37 PM
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I've been meaning to do something about the spam that was wasting at least a half hour of my day every day, so I signed up for Postini about a week ago. $30/year for ten accounts seemed pretty reasonable, and I'm already seeing the difference.
I'm sure that many of you already know of the product, but those who don't, it seems a pretty nice antispam and antivirus solution, at a nice price.
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Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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cj_berlin
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Germany
3964 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 3:56:45 PM
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So thought MadCow's outfit, if I recall correctly...
EDIT: I do recall correctly 
That's what emerged... |
Evgenij Smirnov
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Edited by - cj_berlin on 03/21/2008 4:01:06 PM |
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x7c00
Here To Stay
USA
133 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 11:46:09 PM
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I love Postini as well. I try to sign up all our clients. We're not resllers. We just want fewer calls about spam. Some junk still finds its way through and some good stuff gets caught but it's the best I've used.
Since mail is one of the main vectors for viruses and such Postini is probably more valuable and more effective than some AV programs. Google owns Postini now and sells it quite cheaply to nonprofits. They provide pretty good instructions (some Video)on how to change the MX records and such. Forget emailing or calling G__GLE for help. You're on your own. You'd have a better chance speaking to the Lord himself.
Timmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:) |
Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/22/2008 : 08:28:43 AM
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Nope, Evgenij, I'm just doing the simplest level, inbound filtering.
It was fascinating to see how many spammers were sending SMTP straight to my email server without reading MX records; a bit of IPsec fixed THAT.<g>
Agreed on the documentation, it's not very good, but fortunately I've set up a number of different flavors of SMTP servers in the past. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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cj_berlin
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Germany
3964 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/22/2008 : 09:15:15 AM
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Mark,
I didn't want to rant, just pointing out that the outcome might not always be as favourable as in your case... well, in fact, if it would't work in most cases they would've been out of business already, wouldn't they.
As to directly talking to your mail server... some spam address databases list the (last known good) mx as well (because of some ISPs being vigilant and noticing if a subscriber queries millions of domains for MX in a short period of time). That would be your physical mail server then. Glad to hear it was easy to fix :)
These hosted services are never easy to configure if your Mailflow topology differs from what they assumed a client would have when designing their service. In MadCow's case, though, it did seem pretty straightforward to me...
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Evgenij Smirnov
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Edited by - cj_berlin on 03/22/2008 10:35:58 AM |
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Tray
Major Contributor
USA
758 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/22/2008 : 6:24:25 PM
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Mark:
I am glad that Postini worked out for you. I had a client with a similar setup and they switched from Postini to MXLogic (another hosted spam / AV cleaner). The only thing I have seen from these sites is to allow just those hosted services access to the SMTP server which will drop all of the junk mail from entering into the server by direct IP.
--Tray |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/23/2008 : 06:50:59 AM
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| My needs probably aren't as exacting, and I liked the price -- $30 a year. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Pesos
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
3505 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/27/2008 : 03:05:22 AM
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We use mxlogic, and only pay for the spam and virus screening, inbound only. As for redundancy, we use Mark's trick of setting up win2003 smtp as a store and forward box.
Basically I have two win2003 smtp boxes at different sites running SMTP on a nonstandard port. Mxlogic attempts delivery to my main exchange box, and if it's unavailable for some reason the mail gets shunted to one of the two backups, which attempt to pass it to the main box every 10 minutes. I pay mxlogic $1.50 per mailbox. Postini is supposed to be good but they were a bit pricier and I'm nervous now that google owns 'em! |
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wobble_wobble
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
4517 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/27/2008 : 03:17:07 AM
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Wes or Mark,
Thats the second time I've heard mention of using a 2003 server as a SMTP trap. Where or how?
Ok found mention of a SMTP CD set from Mark, is that where it is?
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Joe
After everything that has happened during the month of Jan 07, I do believe that pigs fly backwards!
http://whatismyv6.com/ |
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Pesos
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
3505 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/27/2008 : 12:08:02 PM
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I *think* I originally found it in Mark's win2003 book, but it may have been online somewhere. I'm sure Mark can point us to it, but basically you set up win2003 smtp, then create a remote domain (or as many remote domains as you want to host) and set them to forward all mail to the ip address of your main mail server. You have to put the ip address in brackets: [xx.xx.xx.xx]
You can then set the intervals you want it to try delivery, and you'll want to up the expiration limit from the default of 2 days to make sure that the backup server doesn't give up in case your main server is down for an extended period of time... |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/29/2008 : 12:58:59 PM
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| It's been a while, but yes, it's definitely in my SMTP CD/PPT. It's just a nice "backstop" to have. At the time I had two different ISPs and this way when one went down I had the other catching the mail. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Brian Walker
Old Timer
USA
533 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 03/31/2008 : 5:04:26 PM
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Interesting.
FWTW, we have a linux box in front of our exchange server that runs spamassassin and clamAV. Annual cost? Whatever it costs to power the server, with no limit on accounts. We have no complaints about the service. |
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Brian |
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Mark Minasi
Chief cook and bottle washer
USA
10658 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 04/02/2008 : 10:10:34 AM
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| No doubt a good answer for some, but it'd cost more than $30 worth of my time to have to remember how to set up and monitor Linux boxes. |
Mark
tweetin' at mminasi |
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Pesos
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
USA
3505 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 04/02/2008 : 11:55:18 AM
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| Not to mention you have to have a super highly available steup, and/or still have some option to catch email if your primary infrastructure is down... |
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kopman
Here To Stay
Canada
158 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 04/02/2008 : 12:54:57 PM
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| We have the open source product ESVA. It's a virtual Unix box thats runs Mailscanner, SpamAssassin and Clamav. It cut out a lot of spam we were still getting with our previous product. The only downside I have on it is that clamav is outdated and the newest version has been slow to come out. Considering we have a different AV internally it's not a huge issue at the moment. |
Peter Haase
================================
MCSE + Security/Messaging, CCNA
"They say Football's a matter of life and death - but it's more important than that" - Bill Shankley |
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Mort
Old Timer
USA
305 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 04/02/2008 : 5:09:07 PM
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Ive been on the postini bandwagon for some time now. For the price you just cant beat the fact that the spam and virus files never reach your network and thus don't such up your bandwidth or time.
Another plus is that should your email server go down, postini will cache your mail for up to two days. We also lock down the mail server at the edge firewall level only allowing smtp from the postini block and OWA access.
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Bradley Lehrer
Welcome Newcomer
USA
1 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 04/03/2008 : 12:15:53 PM
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I am hearing love about Postini. I am trying out currently and I have some trusted email addresses that are not even getting into the quaratine.
They are not bouncing back to the email sender either. We have turned off all filtering on our exhange server.
Anyone who might have thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Brad |
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Roeland
Welcome Newcomer
USA
1 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 06/17/2011 : 07:30:54 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by cj_berlin
Mark,
I didn't want to rant, just pointing out that the outcome might not always be as favourable as in your case... well, in fact, if it would't work in most cases they would've been out of business already, wouldn't they.
As to directly talking to your mail server... some spam address Email list the (last known good) mx as well (because of some ISPs being vigilant and noticing if a subscriber queries millions of domains for MX in a short period of time). That would be your physical mail server then. Glad to hear it was easy to fix :)
These hosted services are never easy to configure if your Mailflow topology differs from what they assumed a client would have when designing their service. In MadCow's case, though, it did seem pretty straightforward to me...
I am having a postfix server as my email server and configured postfix to relay to postini. I have tried many other filters but postini is the best so far. Configuration is not that easy but works well if you can configure. |
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I love Postini
