There is a little bell ringing that links Fasthost and 1&1 either via parent company or as brands from a single one. The bell is quite old and ownerships do alter over time, Google is your friend...
Like a lot of people in here I use 123Reg for domain registration/DNS only. Never been aware of troubles with the DNS. I host my own MX, Web, etc.
;-)
So, do these things happen in a predictable way (if not time) would you say please?
Like, once we have told 123 we want to move the domain (and web / email) away from them, do you agree a cutoff time / date, and then does it happen around that time ... but when they getroundtuit?
Assuming we talking 'on the server(s)' John, as wouldn't that require the original and new servers to be up concurrently or are we using a remote / client machine as an stepping stone here?
And does it matter that they are running Outlook if I use TB to do this transfer process? If so I could potentially setup a single machine with TB and use that to archive all 20 mailboxes and uploaded them to the new host when it becomes available? Am I even close? ;-(
I think all the places it might be done from are 'ok'. ;-)
I may have to look into that if it is likely to help make the process more efficient.
They didn't seem to offer anything, suggesting it might be done via / by the client.
1&1 have suggested a .com could take up to 5 days to transfer and so if I understand it correctly, if we were to actually make the change on a Friday afternoon (given that it's generally quiet email wise over the weekend) that it might not be back up till sometime on Wednesday?Do any emails that are received during that time just get bounced?
If say we have a snapshot of the mailbox taken last thing Friday ... and it comes back up at 4am on Tuesday and some emails come in, can you still 'sync' the mailbox with the emails you previously archived without losing any?
I'm trying to get a feel of the bigger picture as I've only really ever dealt with a single mailbox and people who are generally running SMTP/POP rather than IMAP and across several devices. ;-(
Sorry for all the confused questions ...
Cheers, T i m
So from what has been suggested here, that may not be a 'good thing'?
Understood.
Unless you get a definitive statement that says the two are physically run as one and the same then I'm not sure if we can really predict the service from either can we? I mean, they could be two companies that happen to be part of the same group but are otherwise completely independent?
Is there a reason for that Dave? I mean are they (particularly) cheap or some such?
Thinking out loud on that then ... would keeping the domain / web with
123-reg and just putting the email hosting with (say) 1&1, would that speed the transfer process over? How would they host the same email addresses ... can the two hosts exist or is there no 'addressing' (as in snipped-for-privacy@domain1.com ) and these MX records just point snipped-for-privacy@domain1.com to snipped-for-privacy@domain2.com ?Can you just get email with these providers without also having a domain / webspace?
I'm confused. ;-(
Cheers, T i m
Like Plus Net / BT Internet and chalk / cheese.
registration/DNS
Well I only have .co.uk domains registered with them at a reasonable cost and only use the DNS side. I think at the time I was looking they just happened to give informamtion about how much control you had on the DNS, were a resonable cost and weren't related to Fasthosts in anyway I could fine. B-) I don't have the .com or .audio with them, they are with Big Rock. One for historic reasons, the reselling registra disappeared and Big Rock was the underlying regsitra. The .audio cost, Big Rock want about a tenner/year, 123 £35/year...
Transfer of what? Mail host?
An MX record normally points the domain part of an email address to a hostname. That hostname then has an A record that returns the IP address to send the mail to. You can have more than one MX record for a given domain with the same or different priorties. So:
MX records: domain1.com priority 10 mail.host1.com domain1.com priority 20 mail.host2.com
A records: mail.host1.com mail.host2.com
Normally mail.host1.com would get all mail as that has the highest priority. If that is down then mail.host2.com would get the mail.
The MX records contain a hostname rather than an IP address (which they could) to make maintenance easier. When (not if) the IP address of a mail host changes you only need to change that mail hosts A record rather than the MX records as well.
You also point multiple domains to the same mailhost:
MX records: domain1.com priority 10 mail.host1.com domain1.com priority 20 mail.host2.com
domain2.com priority 20 mail.host1.com domain2.com priority 10 mail.host2.com
Note the priorities have swapped so domain2.com would normally go to mail.host2.com with mail.host1.com as back up.
Obviously mail.host1.com and mail.host2.com need to be configured to accept mail for the domains being pointed at them.
Haven't clue.
It's very simple but can take a bit of getting your head round.
It's better to have all hosts set up and running simultaneously. Then adjust the "time to live" (TTL) settings of the relevant DNS entries to something short, say 5 minutes. Wait for longer than the old TTL, change the relevant IP address's, make sure everything is working and then increase the TTL(s). This way you are in control of when the switch happens and the window were which host gets the traffic is unpredictable is short (5 mins in this case). You *must* wait for longer than the old TTL, if that is several hours it might be worth shortening it to 30 mins or an hour the day before.
That would depend on the time outs set in the sending Mail Transmission Agent (MTA). Default used to be bounce after 7 days, they may warn the sender earlier. Mine is set to warn if an email has been in the queue for more than and hour and bounces after 24 hours.
So (and thanks for your reply / help on this Dave) that would me somehow getting (say) 1&1 to provide a mail host and have it available whilst 123 are still doing the same? It' probably because I don't understand the underlying mechanics (of how it works ITRW with ISP's and such) I am getting confused (like if it was my own LAN email hosts I would probably be able to do what I wanted).
Ok, whilst I understand the words I don't have a feel how or if I would be able to do any of that? I was a hardware guy who happened to become a MCT because I happened to have installed MSMail at the company I worked at and we ended up becoming the International eMail hub because I had wanted something locally. It also extended to Lotus Notes, CCMail and Internet gateways but all that was a long time ago and because I was in charge of it all, I could add / remove the stuff was and when *I* decided. ;-(
So possibly numerous remote clients (that we have no control over)?
Ok. I did suggest to my mate getting the .co.uk domain (email) he's reserved online and giving his customers that as a backup during the changeover but he said he's rather not and would rather just pre-warn his key customers that they are changing systems and there may be some outage.
Ok (I will continue in your later reply)
Cheers, T i m.
Quite. ;-)
Ok and unless you are running a realtime ecommerce site then you may not notice any website downtime etc (compared with email etc).
Hehe.
Ok.
Sorry, yes, probably my tenuous understanding / terms there. Assuming that we keep the bits with 123-reg that they seem to be ok at, could we get the emails hosted elsewhere (and I think the answer to that is yes, as per other replies in this thread) *and would doing so* make the process quicker (as in it all going online, not mailbox content transfers particularly) or easier somehow? eg, Could we have the new email host up and running (tested) and then just point all 20 mailboxes across to said now host (x20 mailboxes)? Could that happen in say a (max) couple of hours as opposed to the 'up to 5 days' as suggested by 1&1?
Hmm, I think I get that (conceptually if nothing else). ;-)
Ok, I think I follow that ...
OK, Time out here if I may. Would what you have suggested above be of specific use if we were to say stick with 123-reg as our primary email host but have an alternative one for the times if/when they were down?
What if we didn't ... what if we just wanted to keep it simple, how could we best get that simple solution (of an alternative host for the emails) whilst retaining 123-red for the DNS / Website etc please?
Hmm, and that could be part of the answer to my question above.
You may have hinted at a solution but it probably isn't.
Say they are acme.com with email addresses of tom, dick and harry @ acme.com.
We want to move our emails elsewhere and find the 'easiest' way to get that is to register another domain and have that hosted somewhere else as say acme.co.uk. It comes with unlimited web space (which we don't care about), unlimited 25GB capacity email addresses (that could reflect tom, dick and harry @ acme.co.uk etc) but could we then redirect any emails that are heading for say snipped-for-privacy@acme.com to snipped-for-privacy@acme.co.uk and then finally be pushed or pulled to the client and appear to come from snipped-for-privacy@acme.COM ? Any replies would in turn go back to the amce.co.uk server and end up on the clients machine as from snipped-for-privacy@acme.com?
Yes, but it only becomes simple *once* you have your head around it. ;-)
I'm pretty sure I did all the sorts of things I'm asking if are possible with all the mail gateways when set them up for the place I worked for (primarily as a datacomms Field Support guy) ~30 years ago, however, that was mostly in-house and so you didn't need things to conform with / to anything on the outside world. ;-)
I have seen responses from SMTP servers who won't 'act as a relay' so I'm aware we have to conform to / be limited by those things that are allowed out there and ITRW.
Cheers, T i m
p.s. I'm also one of those people who learns best by doing and ideally with some mentoring now and again. That method is perfectly ok if the needs isn't mission / time critical and needs to be right straight away. ;-(
The last thing I found was that 1&1 acquired Fastshosts in 2006 and hopefully (if your feelings about them were truly representative) were consumed by 1&1.
At least with it being that way round, rather than a merger (even) then I'm hoping there is hope. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
If anyone wants some cribs for setting up their own mail relay and incoming server on a virtual private server just ask.
You need minimal RAM and CPU power to do this and so the most basic VPS at less than a £100 a year will do.
There is always scope for stuff to not go according to plan. However the best way to mitigate is to set everything up in parallel, so that you can port stuff a bit at a time and keep old and new systems running together.
Exactly how you do that will depend a bit on the circumstance and exactly what you are trying to port.
Do that bit last. Setup new mailboxes on the new host, port the content, and do any domain level swapping about last.
If you use TB - then it can be on a third machine (not necessarily a server) - just a normal desktop. However there are either applications you can run on a server (if you have the level of access required) or third party services you can buy that will do the same thing server to server with data centre speeds of transfer rather than consumer ADSL etc.
You may find your new host has (or rebadges) a service like this.
You can migrate stuff that you can access via IMAP on TB, but it won't do exchange mailboxes. So moving the mail would be possible but not the calendars and contact lists etc. However you could do those with outlook (probably - not tried to be sure).
The third party services will certainly do full exchange mailboxes if required.
Even "ok" can take a while shifting several GB of mailbox!
You may find the offering is different depending on if you are going for
1&1s own mailboxes, or for their resold office 365 option. (the latter would have MS support to do planned migrations)(not sure if 1&1 also do their own hosted exchange mailboxes outside of the office 365 service - I know RS do)
If everything is setup, then all you need to do at the end is transfer the domain (although in reality there is not absolute requirement to do that. You could keep the domain hosted on 123 and just update the MX records to point at the new server(s)
Depends on how its done. So long as there are valid MX handlers in place all the time, they the mail should be delivered somewhere.
Should be able to - but it does depend on where they were sent.
I can give you one real world example. This was migrating many users from 123-reg mailboxes. Fortunately by virtue of history all the email addresses were setup on 123 as forwards (this is because in the early days of their pophost system, mailboxes were created and given out with a hosting package and pre-named for you - so we had loads of mailboxes called internode-23, internode-24 etc. Hence we had to use the forwarding at snipped-for-privacy@somecomanydomain.com -> to deliver mail to the unimaginatively named mailboxes (the desktop client would be setup to send as snipped-for-privacy@somecompanydomain.com, so the outside world would be non the wiser that there was a "private" internal address that was not publicly used or advertised).
Even when that system went, and you could create mailboxes with proper names, we kept with the forward system for consistency - except snipped-for-privacy@somedomain.com -> would forward to snipped-for-privacy@somedomain.com
When we migrated them to rackspace, we created newdomain.com and setup rackpace as the mx handler for that. Then created a mailbox called snipped-for-privacy@newdomain.com on that, and updated the forward to that it was delivering new mail to *both* 123 and RS mailboxes. Then we used their third party migration tool to port the bulk IMAP stuff from old to new. The next step was to then update the user's desktop to point at the new server and mailbox. That should then get them all the mail but on the new mailbox. At that point we could update the forward to drop delivery to the 123 mailbox and delete the 123 reg mailbox.
In this case we never felt the need to move the actual domains themselves (and actually find the 123 reg forwarding capabilities quite handy as they make doing mailing lists and stuff easy without needing to consume a mailbox creating them).
(It turns out there is a more sophisticated setup that's possible with our rackspace setup - they can support what they call split domain email routing, where you point your mx records at the RS servers, but then also give them a link back to the old MX handlers. Thence all emails come in initially to the new servers, but if they can't match the mailbox (because its not been ported yet) they then forward the email onto the old MX handlers)
Ah, the law of Sod. ;-)
Understood.
That's the bit I can't get my head round (setup / porting) ... for me to get things ready on an alternative host and because my mate would like (if it doesn't make everything more complicated) to move his domain registration(s), web server / space and emails away from 123. ITRW he really only has an issue with the reliability of their email service so it wouldn't be a big issue if we just moved the email.
So, say we went to 1&1 and asked them to host the domain name, web site and emails, at some point 123 would need to stop doing so and 1&1 start. So, if 1&1 give us access to their (our new) email system (or their admin panel for us to create them etc) say 5 days before 123 chops us off ... can we setup say tom, dick and snipped-for-privacy@acme.com on 1&1, even though those email accounts are still live on 123? If the answer is 'yes' (as I suspect it must be to be able to do as you suggest), and lets say have an archive of the 3 email accounts on a PC somewhere, how would I access them from the outside world to be able to put the historic emails back on the new server, ready for the switch (please)?
The only way I can think of is by directly accessing the new email host directly via it's ip address and either using something like ftp to put the emails / folders back or maybe my 'archive' PC can access the same place using an ip address on TB? (Outside of 'them' doing it for us somehow).
.
Understood. On that / this, I've come across something that may help this (and another matter), namely 'MailStore Server'.
I've installed their free Home solution on my W10 box and archived my
123 and Googlemail accounts. My next test is to delete *all* my emails (Inbox / Sent) and see if I can recover them using MailStore. If I can and given a recent issue they have had re emails being deleted accidentally (when they have been trying to 'create space' via webmail) this could offer a good stepping stone and future protection?
Ah, that may (indirectly) answer my questions above in that the new host *is* available even though the domain hasn't moved across. eg, We can get to the new mailboxes but mail won't be delivered there automatically?
Ok. So ideally and ignoring the fact the website wasn't available (till 1&1 were offering it online) the mail should be ok? So could we setup the new email accounts on 1&1 a couple of weeks before any switch?
Again, this is where something like MailStore might help (me at least). If I understand how it works correctly, it would poll all the (IMAP) mailbox on 123 at regular intervals and archive everything. This doesn't matter if the email originated from an external person (received) or sent from their PC, laptop, tablet or phone.
KISS. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
With the control of the DNS you have with 123 any host can be anywhere.
Yes, you ought to be able to setup and test the new host without it being "live", so it doesn't matter if it falls over or has to be taken down for some reason. There might be a gotcha with hosting services from a third party in that without them having the domain registration they might not want to setup email for that domain. This must be a common "problem" so they must have a solution.
TBH migration of existing mailboxes had escaped me. I'm not sure how one would do that, I suspect migration of existing mailboxes is the hard part. How much data needs to be shifted will affect how long it'll take.
If it's only going to take a few hours I'd be tempted to:
Make note of orginal MX record TTL(s). Set the MX record(s) TTL to five minutes. Stop the current live host accepting mail, preferably sending some form of "not now" response. Stop users accessing the old host. Do the migration of the entire mail database to new host. Start users accesing the new host. Start the new host accepting mail. Wait for the orginal TTL to expire, timing from when the TTL was set to five minutes. Change the MX records to point at the new host. Check all is working as expected. Set the MX record(s) TTL back to the orginal value.
With the old host saying "not now" mail should just sit in sender queues until the MX record(s) change to point at the new host. Stopping user access prevents them changing things. This avoids having to sync any mails or changes that occur while the migration takes place. You in effect freeze the databse, move it, unfreeze it.
That's the idea, except the switch is done at domain level not user mailbox level.
The "switch" of live system from old host to new would take as long as the short TTL you set on the MX records. Migrating the existing mailboxes is what will take the time if you have a few gigabytes to shift.
Above cut down to minimum.
It's a chain of pointers. Basically when something wants to send mail to domain.com. It asks the DNS for the MX record of domain.com, it gets back the fully quaified domain name of the mail host for domain.com. It then asks the DNS for the IP address of that fully qualified domain. It then tries to open port 25 on that IP address to send the mail.
Yes. The MX simple priority does that, cut down again.
mail.host1.com would be tried first, if that fails mail.host2.com would be tried. If that fails the mail stays in the sender queue for a while then retried starting with mail.host1.com then repeat as before.
Edit the MX record(s) on 123 to point at the alernative host(s).
As you are looking at third party hosts, that is their problem. If you were aetting up you own box to handle mail you would need to make sure that it only accepted mail for your domain(s).
We use VTS Hosting, very capable and personable.
Yes, I knew that bit ... ;-)
Gdgd.
One would hope.
Whilst I follow the logic I have little idea of how much of that I would actually have control over ITRW.
Understood.
Sounds nice, not sure how you stop outside users / customers sending emails in though?
Understood.
5 x 5 GB max.Thanks, much easier to absorb. ;-)
Understood that ok. ;-)
Understood.
So, how about this ... set up the new mail host and configure mailboxes. Sick a firewall on it and then edit the MX records to point to it as the primary (with 123 as the secondary). Once everything is up and the Inet knows about them both, open the firewall and allow new mail to come in, removing 123's MX record?
That's probably what you said above (but workable ITRW)? ;-)
The other issue is mail retention and archiving. Given that all the clients use IMAP it's potentially quite easy for any of them to delete everything from the server and it being authoritive (if that's the right word), as each device syncs it will delete everything there too?
So, could we get a mail host to say retain any deleted email long enough to be able to archive it somehow (3rd party app like MailStore Server)?
You could setup a separate machine polling all the mailboxes with POP3 and leaving the emails on the server bit that wouldn't catch any emails sent from elsewhere?
Cheers, T i m
I'll check them out as well, thanks. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
You ought have control of all of it. What you might not have control of, and the only real probem maker, would not being able to stop access from the 'net and users to the old host. Access to the new host isn't a problem as the'net or users won't "know" about it until the MX records change.
See above, that is the bit you might not have nice control over. A dirty method would be to change the IP address of the A record of the FQDN of the old mail host to something that will either not respond at all on port 25 or only respond with "not now", This IP address really needs to be one you "own" rather than a random one. Perhaps you could use the IP address of your home connection?
25 GB, not a great deal of data but what is the bandwidth of the transfer connection?Unless you are paranoid about people running scripts to find open relays the firewall isn't required. MTAs "out there" and users won't know of the new host until the MX records change. So:
Orginal records: MX: domain.com priority 10 mail.host.com
A: mail.host.com
New records: MX domain.com priority 10 new.mail.host.com
A record: new.mail.host.com
Or new records retaining old host as backup: MX: domain.com priority 10 new.mail.host.com domain.com priority 20 mail.host.com
A record: new.mail.host.com mail.host.com
There are two things I don't like about IMAP. One is you really need a net connection to be absolutely sure of being able to read an old email. The other is that it's far to easy to delete an email and have it disappear everywhere. I don't want my mobile devices cluttered up with "chatter" from email lists or WHY but I do want to see that chatter, just not keep it. However the chatter still needs to be there when I'm home.
Thinking about it now these issues probably have a root related to POP3 and IMAP not playing nicely together. POP3 on the home machine is set to "delete mail on server"... This does mean the chatter automatically gets removed from mobile devices after the home machine has got it but it also means wanted email has gone as well. B-(
Its fine to move the lot - but do it a bit at a time.
You should be able to setup the new mailboxes etc even while the DNS is pointing the MX records at the 123 mail servers. Once you are happy all the new mailboxes are setup, you should be able to update the MX records in the 123-reg control DNS control panel to point at the new servers. So mail will now start being delivered to the new servers. You can now migrate the mailbox contents and change the settings on the desktop to use the new mail server.
Once you are happy that the mail is ported you can delete the old mailboxes. At that point you can worry about moving web hosting etc. (again, same principle - get new hosting, upload site to it, then update the DNS to change the A records to point at the new host.
Several options... Say you had TB setup to access old and new mailboxes simultaneously, just drag and drop from one account to the other.
Failing that, copy to "Local Folders" first and then copy back.
You would (and in any case do) access the mailservers directly - via IMAP rather than FTP typically. (you can also get stuff via POP, but hat does not let you put stuff back or access stuff in folders stored on the server)
Indeed - there are several mail backup / archiving options out there.
Yup. Also don't confuse the domain hosting itself (i.e. the people who give DNS space to holding all the domain's records), and the servers that the domain identifies as being responsible for different services. Also keep in mind that the domain can point at multiple hosts for different services. So email can be handled by one server / company, while web another, all the time the domain itself is hosted by a third.
When you move the domain itself, keep in mind that you may need to setup the records again on the new host.
How does PlusNet do email? Email is the only problem I've had with BT (but OK now) and I've heard of a few having problems with their PlusNet email too.
Fairly standard. They supply SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 servers, you can have multiple mailboxes but not especially large storage before they moan at you, you can set delivery rules/aliases/autoresponders for them, they also have webmail but it's pretty old-hat.
It's their webmail that has been mainly what they've had problems with "recently" the problems have affected some non-webmail users (e.g. my neighbour but not me) but we worked around it in his case by increasing outlook timeouts. They had a few overnight maintenance periods last year where I think they replaced and/or increased the number of servers involved.
One issue they are still working on is SSL for the email protocols, at the moment it's clear text passwords only, which is OK if you're accessing from home and the password isn't leaving their network, not really usable if you're away from home and using 3G or someone else's wifi.
That's one time where retaining the email address on the 123-reg servers as a forward to the new mailbox be handy - its then easy to add a second target to the forward so direct mail to an archive mailbox.
Could also work - but won't see stuff in folders. So that would not archive any sent email - only incoming.
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