Cloud Mails stays in the cloud creating dark clouds over cloudserver viability

published by kimkhan on November 11, 2009 - 01:14

Recenlty:

I have been trying to setup a customer support oriented website where I will have a contact form for general inquiry, a user signup page (I am using Drupal) and a help desk support application (OSTicket). Everything depends on my server being able to send out notifications anytime any of the above happens. I singed up with Rackspace and it has been an ongoing battle with them.

One technical support just pointed me to their knowledgebase on how to install postfix and mail server and closed the ticket without answering my questions on how to resolve the issue of the IP I am assigned is in Spamhaus’s PBL (Policy based blocking list) – The PBL is implemented by Rackspace itself. They supplied the list to spamhaus and according to spamhaus - Here is an extract from Spamhaus

"Outbound Email Policy of Rackspace US, Inc. for this IP range:

It is the policy of rackspace that unauthenticated email sent from this IP address should be sent out only via the designated outbound mail server allocated to rackspace customers. To find the hostname of the correct mail server to use, customers should consult the original signup documentation or contact rackspace Technical Support."

I have made several requests on providing information on their outbound mail server. All I need is a single email address originating from my server notifying me and my users.

I am frustrated. I know ask myself and others what is the point of a cloud server hosting? What are we supposed to host on a cloud server? only wikis or 90’s era website? If the basic functions of a modern website are absent from cloud then I do not think that the cloud business model will succeed.

It appears that most cloud providers including amazon elastic cloud EC2 are doing the same - keeping the cloudmails within the cloud. Here is a link to another blog site where I actually posted the above comment already.

http://orensol.com/2009/10/29/the-paradox-of-the-mail-server-on-the-clou...