If you have a VDS with Hardhathosting.com and would like to receive your mail at an external mail server instead of using the Email control panel provided with your account, follow the instructions below.

1) Create an A record for the External mail server. (It has to be a name other then mail.yourdomain.com)

a) Log into your control panel and go to Domain Settings | DNS Records and click on New DNS Record
b) Choose Address Record (A Record)
c) Enter the host name in the "Sub domain name" field. (Something like mail2)
d) Enter the IP Address of the External mail server in the "Network Address" field and click "Finish".

2) Point your Main MX Record to the Address record that you just created.

a) Click "Main MX Record" button in "DNS Records" screen.
b) Enter the Full Address record name that you created in step 1 next to Priority "10". Make sure that you put a period after the A record name.

In step one we created the Address record mail2.yourdomain.com so the Priority 10 record would be "mail2.yourdomain.com.", sans the quotes.

3) Wait for DNS to propagate. Hardhathosting.com's DNS propagates at least every 2 hours but it may take 24 hours or so for your provider to update their DNS Record.

4) Use nslookup at http://network-tools.com/nslook/ to verify that new MX record has propagated. (After 2 hour delay)

a) Enter your domain name in the "domain" field and choose "MX" for the "query type" field then click "Go"
b) Review the output to make sure that your MX record is pointing to the newly created record for your external mail server.