Hi. I am looking to deploy nginx on a proxy server. The real backend is located in a remoate geographic location and has apache, mysql, dovecot and postfix services supporting an IMAP mail-server. I am a bit confused on how DNS is to be setup on both the proxy and the backend server. I am assuming that I define the nameservers in the registrar for the proxies (I will have two; one as a failover). I am also assuming that on the proxy itself, bind is installed of course and the MX is defined as mail.example.com for example. I am aware that in the nginx.conf, I define the mail directive as follows:

`mail {
server_name mail.example.com;
...
}`

Basically, I read that on the physical proxy box, the hostname can be ns1.example.com (as long as it matches what is defined in the registrar), but having listed mail.example.com in nginx.com means that it will be our single point for reference for all our users looking to authenticate and use the IMAP service.

If I am correct so far, I would then like to know how bind is to be configured on the real backend. Should the hostname also be mail.example.com? I would assume that it couldn't hurt since the world is not aware of this backend machine so pinging by hostname would not resolve THIS box but rather the proxy box. So I am assuming the authoritative DNS config (including the reverse DNS) is to be setup entirely on the proxy box, leaving the real backend as just a hostname and using proxy_pass http://physical.ip.address.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.