An MX record, which stands for "Mail Exchanger Record," is a type of DNS record used to indicate which mail server(s) are responsible for receiving email traffic for a specific domain. MX records are often used to determine where emails should be delivered when sent to a particular email address within that domain.
A typical MX record looks like the following:
yourdomain.com. IN MX 10 mailserver.yourdomain.com.- "yourdomain.com" is the domain for which the MX record is specified.
- "IN" stands for Internet and indicates that this is an Internet-related DNS record.
- "MX" is the record type that specifies that this is a mail exchange record.
- "10" is the priority of the mail server. A lower numeric value indicates a higher priority. If there are multiple MX records, the priority indicates the preferred server for receiving email traffic. If there is only one MX record, the priority is usually irrelevant.
- "mailserver.yourdomain.com" is the hostname of the mail server that receives e-mail messages for yourdomain.com.
A domain can have multiple MX records, and this is often used for failover and redundancy. If one of the mail server hostnames is unavailable, the mail server will attempt to deliver to the mail server with the next highest priority.
When someone sends an e-mail to an address on yourdomain.com, the sender's e-mail service will first query the MX records for yourdomain.com to identify the appropriate mail server to send the e-mail to. The sender's email server will then connect to the specified mail server to deliver the email.
Managing MX records is important when setting up and configuring email services for a domain. It ensures that incoming emails are delivered correctly to the correct mail server for processing.