Re: Email Transfer

Sam wrote:

John writes:

Hi.

I recently changed domain registrars and virtual server hosts, and it didn't go too smoothly (I'm sure some mail was lost).

I'll go through what I needed to do, and perhaps you can advise on how to do it in future.

Start Point
-----------

example.com registered by ISP-A and pointed to ISP-A's DNS Servers.
ISP-A's DNS Servers point to the IP of a virtual server box at ISP-A.


End Point
---------

example.com registered by ISP-B and pointed to ISP-C's name servers.
ISP-C's DNS Servers point to the IP of a virtual server box at ISP-C.


I just left everyone accessing emails at example.com throughout. As the change went through, they started to access the new server rather than the old server. The problem was that mail still got delivered to the old server, and this couldn't then be accessed. I eventually got a different name to access the old server at ISP-A and had the users accessing both servers, but this seemed messy.

Suggestions?


Separate domain registration from domain hosting. ISPs have no business registering domains. The domain belongs to you, and only you.

When you're ready to switch ISPs, first get the new ISP to set up their DNS servers for your domain, then update your domain registration with the new DNS servers (which still serve the same DNS data).

Set up new E-mail accounts with the new ISP, then have the old ISP forward mail to your new ISP. You may begin to cut over all your mail client access at that point to the new ISP.

Once that's done, update your DNS so that the MX records point to your new ISP's mail servers, and wait a couple of days for DNS to propagate.


Sam,

You have provided some insightful guidance, but you are relying that the current provider will undertake the forwarding. At times switching Name server designation from one provider to the next often will terminate DNS services with the former provider and could affect hosted services (email, web).

John,

Your approach on a transition from one provider to the next would depend on the manner in which provisioning occurs within each provider's system.

1) advise your current provider to reduce the Time To Live (TTL) on the DNS records to 60-900 seconds.
2) Get your new provider to setup the email,web etc. services and get the information from them as to where said services should be pointed.
3) once you transfer your website data and verify that it is functional, you can get your current ISP to point to the new location (IP/hostname).
4) Make sure to check with the current provider that the email accounts have been setup and provisioned.
5) Test whether the email accounts with the new provider are functioning as intented. This can be done by telneting to the host listed for the MX which you obtained from the current provider in step 2 and performing an SMTP session. Using an email client and using the MX host as the SMTP server will do as well. Send emails to all the email addresses that you setup with the new host. Make sure these emails have been delivered correctly.
6) once you are satisfied that the email is functional as you wanted, notify the current host to alter the MX records for your domain and reflecting the host/hosts you obtained in step 2 from the new host. Making a change over the weekend.
7) You would need to make sure that all is functional once the change has been made to make sure there were not "errors"
8) Monday, retrieve the emails from the prior provider. Then you can reconfigure your email clients to retrieve emails from the new provider.
9) Prior to altering the registration record to point the DNS records to the new provider, make sure to findout from the current provider how their provisioning system handles these types of changes. Based on the information you get, decide when the optimal time for the transition is such that there will be a minimal interruption if at all.
10) 24-48 hours after the above has been complete, notify the former provider to remove the zone of your domain from their DNS servers.

AK

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Tracing emails from outside clients
    ... Wherever you wish to host the DNS just make sure you create the identical ... The secondary server arrangement is just a legacy thing. ...
    (microsoft.public.exchange.misc)
  • Re: Web Site Mystery
    ... host our own web site at this location. ... So in our DNS setup, there is a pointer to the ip address of the ... Run an ipconfig /all on your server and you'll see the ... www.europacrown.com don't work from our corporate network. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • Re: Web Site Mystery
    ... host our own web site at this location. ... So in our DNS setup, there is a pointer to the ip address of the ... Run an ipconfig /all on your server and you'll see ... www.europacrown.com don't work from our corporate network. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • Re: A g;lobal catalog cannot be located to retrieve the icons from the member list
    ... Primary DNS Server is UNIX ... Provider Version:2 ... Attr: subschemaSubentry ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)
  • Re: How to disable the "implicit mx record" in Exchange
    ... the host with the A record for the actual domain. ... So when Exchange gets a DNS timeout looking up an MX record, ... their own Exchange or other type of mail server under their own domain name, ... DNS UDP traffic max packet size is ...
    (microsoft.public.exchange.admin)