Can you have 2 different mx records for mail server

Yes, it is possible to have multiple MX records for a mail server. In fact, it's a common practice to have multiple MX records to provide redundancy, load balancing, and failover capabilities for your email infrastructure.

Here are some scenarios where you might want to have multiple MX records:

1. Redundancy: You can set up multiple MX records to point to different mail servers or data centers, ensuring that your email infrastructure remains available even if one of the servers or data centers goes down.
2. Load balancing: By having multiple MX records, you can distribute the email traffic across multiple mail servers, reducing the load on each individual server and improving overall performance.
3. Failover: If one of your mail servers becomes unavailable, the other MX records can redirect email traffic to the remaining available servers, ensuring that email delivery continues uninterrupted.
4. Geographic routing: You can set up multiple MX records with different priorities to route email traffic to mail servers located in different geographic regions, improving delivery times and reducing latency.

When setting up multiple MX records, keep the following best practices in mind:

1. Prioritize your MX records: Use the Preference field to prioritize your MX records. The lower the preference value, the higher the priority. This ensures that email traffic is routed to the most preferred mail server first.
2. Use unique names: Make sure each MX record has a unique name (e.g., mx1.yourdomain.com and mx2.yourdomain.com) to avoid conflicts and ensure that email traffic is routed correctly.
3. Update your DNS: Update your DNS records to reflect the new MX records. This may take some time to propagate globally, so be patient.
4. Test your setup: Verify that your email infrastructure is functioning correctly by sending test emails and monitoring the delivery process.

Here's an example of how you might set up multiple MX records:

In this example, mx1.yourdomain.com has a priority of 10, mx2.yourdomain.com has a priority of 20, and mx3.yourdomain.com has a priority of 30. If mail1.yourdomain.com becomes unavailable, email traffic will be routed to mail2.yourdomain.com (with a priority of 20), and then to mail3.yourdomain.com (with a priority of 30) if necessary.