MX and A Records/CNAMES

[Koehler, Charles]

I need assistance to see if this is acceptable practice.

Currently we have three separate hosts that serve web and email w/ A
record and two MX records:

host1 at ucsf.edu. IN A     192.5.5.4
host1 at ucsf.edu. IN MX 0  localmailhost at ucsf.edu.
host1 at ucsf.edu. IN MX 10 remotemailhost at outsidemail.net.

host2 at ucsf.edu. IN A     192.5.5.10
host2 at ucsf.edu. IN MX 0  localmailhost at ucsf.edu.
host2 at ucsf.edu. IN MX 10 remotemailhost at outsidemail.net.

host3 at ucsf.edu. IN A     192.5.5.20
host3 at ucsf.edu. IN MX 0  localmailhost at ucsf.edu.
host3 at ucsf.edu. IN MX 10 remotemailhost at outsidemail.net.



The server group wants to merge the web services to from these three
hosts to a new server, mainwebhost.ucsf.edu.
mainwebhost.ucsf.edu. IN A 192.5.5.50

I did the following:
1) Remove A Record (object) for host1.ucsf.edu
2) Add CNAME of host1.ucsf.edu to mainwebhost.ucsf.edu
3) Attempted to add MX record to MX host1.ucsf.edu to host1.ucsf.edu but
encountered an error stating that the mail host did not exist.

QIP requires that there be an A Record rather than CNAME for the MX but
can I do an exception as follows? And if not what specific RFC can I
reference?

mainwebhost.ucsf.edu. IN A       192.5.5.50
host1 at ucsf.edu.       IN CNAME   mainwebhost.ucsf.edu.
host2 at ucsf.edu.       IN CNAME   mainwebhost.ucsf.edu.
host3 at ucsf.edu.       IN CNAME   mainwebhost.ucsf.edu.
host1 at ucsf.edu.       IN MX  0   localmailhost at ucsf.edu.
host1 at ucsf.edu.       IN MX  0   remotemailhost at outsidemail.net.
host2 at ucsf.edu.       IN MX  0   localmailhost at ucsf.edu.
host2 at ucsf.edu.       IN MX  0   remotemailhost at outsidemail.net.
host3 at ucsf.edu.       IN MX  0   localmailhost at ucsf.edu.
host3 at ucsf.edu.       IN MX  0   remotemailhost at outsidemail.net.


Thank you in advance,
Charles