I have run a mail server from my home since the late 1990’s. I was fortunate enough to have a fast (128 kbps!) connection with a static IP address even back then. It’s been great to have my own server, especially when I opened my own medical practice and the staff could use email internally without exposing information to the whole internet. It has also been an adventure. Though many people recommend against self-hosting email, I’ve found that the challenges it presents have kept me in touch with valuable ‘net esoterica.
At one point, I had over a thousand users and mailboxes. Now that I’m retired, I’ve backed off on that a lot and have encouraged people to migrate to commercial services. That’s taken a lot of the pressure off, but running a mail server successfully requires fierce dedication to uptime. That’s created new challenges as I prepare to move to the island. My connection there is fast, but it’s a residential connection and the people managing it don’t seem to know much about the internet: I’ve asked three times now if I could get a static IP address, and each time they’ve escalated the ticket to the top, and I have still never received an answer. It’s possible to use a dynamic IP address for email, especially as it doesn’t seem to change often (it’s been the same for almost three months now), but it isn’t a great idea.
It’s also a six mile long hunk of fiber that is precariously strung on poles alongside very tall trees that tend to fall down, severing the line, when hurricane winds blow.
I could host the server on a virtual private server (VPS) in one of the many cloud companies around, but I would lose control and confidentiality and it also might be kind of expensive (mostly because of the huge volumes of spam that people try to send to my users).
I have satellite backup for when the main line is down, but it sits behind carrier-grade NAT which makes it unsuitable for running servers.
Instead, what I am attempting is to set up an inexpensive VPS that will just be a front end for the mail server, and relay all the mail data (using a wireguard VPN) to my home-based server. It’s something I can set up, test, and fine tune now before my coming cancer surgery and my overseas move. The server can come with me in my carry-on baggage. It will be down for less than ten hours of travel time. From there, once I get on the island (or even if I get stuck in an airport!) I can bring the server up and it will establish contact with the VPS, whose static IP (with a good reputation) can start handling mail. Same thing if I have to switch to my backup satellite link.
It’s sorta-kinda working right now. I just have some problems to figure out to get it all running properly before I throw the Big Switch.
—2p