Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Does one need multiple outside static IP addresses to host web and mail server?

[alex_l]

Q: Does one need to have more than one ISP (outside) static IP address to host its own mail and web server?

Or will one static IP with port forwarding to two different machines (one mail and other web server) be good enough?

What would happen if one wants to host two websites on one machine (web server) and have webmail to access emails (presumably via port 80) on another (mail server)?

My only concern is I guess my ASA 5505 won't support more than one assigned static IP or am I wrong?

Please enlighten me.

[Steve_Arm]

All your questions are valid. What exactly do you want to do?
You can either do it with one IP or 2 IPs. To access the mail server from the
web server you can connect with the LAN IP.

[alex_l]

a small company i work for has its own mail server. they want to add a web server to host two websites that have very small traffic.

currently there is one static IP purchased for mail server and i want to know if we need another one for a web server. also important if we need to upgrade our existing gear like Cisco ASA-5505 or if it can be expanded to work with multiple (two) static addresses.

Both machines will probably be put in DMZ else someone would advise against that.

many thanks for your advices.

[040Hosting]

You can use port forwarding as you suggest, one static IP is more as enough, unless you want to run multiple services on the same port, that would not be possible and would need you to add additional IP's.

I would advise not to run your own web servers if you do not have multiple uplinks as a real data center would have, as your site might get unavailable if your internet connection breaks. Email might (in the right setup) try to deliver your mail later, but a visitor to a website which doesnt work probably does not return.

[john8]

Do you mean both your webmail and web sites are on port 80?

Even so, you can use virtual host tech to achieve that.

1 IP is enough.

[ldcdc]

Looks technical to me, so moved.

[urzevel]

Are we talking about 2 actual machines or one machine and having the apache and mail demon running on it? if its one machine you just need 1 IP, you can always configure the services to run on different ports, or use port fwding

[blite]

are you using webmail? that might add a little more to the mix if so but it should still be possible to do it all on one ip