Email Transfer

am 02.12.2005 12:12:52 von John

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?

John

Re: Email Transfer

am 02.12.2005 12:54:57 von Sam

This is a MIME GnuPG-signed message. If you see this text, it means that
your E-mail or Usenet software does not support MIME signed messages.
The Internet standard for MIME PGP messages, RFC 2015, was published in 1996.
To open this message correctly you will need to install E-mail or Usenet
software that supports modern Internet standards.

--=_mimegpg-commodore.email-scan.com-9322-1133524503-0001
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

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.

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Re: Email Transfer

am 02.12.2005 23:54:38 von AK

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

Re: Email Transfer

am 03.12.2005 00:18:07 von Sam