[NBLUG/talk] Moving Mail services from one server to another

Jose I. Sanchez dahose1 at dslextreme.com
Fri May 5 14:59:33 PDT 2006


You didn't mention multiple IP's so I kind of assumed that you were talking 
about an infrastructure model where there would be only one public IP 
address the MX record could be pointed to.  There would definitely be an 
interruption in service when you make the changeover that way.  If you have 
multiple public IP's then you should be able to do the whole shebang with no 
interruption in service.

Jose

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Wagner" <chriswagner at amyskitchen.net>
To: "General NBLUG chatter about anything Linux, answers to questions,etc." 
<talk at nblug.org>
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 2:33 PM
Subject: RE: [NBLUG/talk] Moving Mail services from one server to another


I believe that's what I described.  Maybe I didn't word it as clearly,
though.

- Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at nblug.org [mailto:talk-bounces at nblug.org] On Behalf
Of Jose I. Sanchez
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 1:52 PM
To: General NBLUG chatter about anything Linux, answers to
questions,etc.
Subject: Re: [NBLUG/talk] Moving Mail services from one server to
another

I don't think there would be any interruption of mail services with the
outlined plan if you add one step.  If you forward mail from the old
server
to the new server via IP address and not DNS, then messages would flow
instantly.  The new server experiences down time from the replication
lag
across the global DNS server chains.  So in effect, mail keeps going to
the
old IP address until the new IP address gets replicated.  If you are
putting
in a new server there is no reason to keep the old IP address, unless it
is
the ONLY one you have available or other services run on the same box.
Setup your new server on a NEW IP address and make your MX update.  If
mail
gets sent to the old MX listing, that server is still running on the old
IP
address.  It gets mail and forwards instantly to the new IP address.
Once
your new MX record finishes replicating the old server won't get anymore

mail.  You can then decomission the old server and you are good to go.

Jose

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walter Hansen" <gandalf at sonic.net>
To: "General NBLUG chatter about anything Linux, answers to
questions,etc."
<talk at nblug.org>
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 12:11 PM
Subject: RE: [NBLUG/talk] Moving Mail services from one server to
another


> Thanks. I'll start investigating these methods. This sounds like a
much
> better plan.
>
>> Whenever I've changed mail servers, once the new server was
configured
>> and tested, I would change the MX record over, and also set-up the
old
>> mail server to stop accepting mail and begin relaying mail to the new
>> server.  At the same time, I would begin migrating mailboxes by using
>> 'mb2md' which is an amazing utility to convert mbox-style mail stores
to
>> Maildir-style mail stores.  This wouldn't require the client to check
>> multiple mailboxes and also would lend towards the zero downtime goal
of
>> most migrations.  There would, of course, be a period of time where
not
>> all mail would be accessible to the client, but I think this is about
as
>> good as it gets for your situation.
>>
>> - Chris
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: talk-bounces at nblug.org [mailto:talk-bounces at nblug.org] On
Behalf
>> Of Walter Hansen
>> Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 6:55 PM
>> To: talk at nblug.org
>> Subject: [NBLUG/talk] Moving Mail services from one server to another
>>
>> I'm moving mailservices from one to another as part of an upgrade
from a
>> Mandrake 10 to Mandriva 2006 (sonic colo server).
>>
>> On the old box I was using old style mailboxes in /var/spool/mail/
and a
>> cute little pop3 utility to serve them.
>>
>> I'm sure the new server is set up for the distributed mailboxes.
>>
>> I've only got a handful of users and would like to add spam filtering
>> "[SPAM]" at sometime if that's not a big deal.
>>
>> Anyway any suggestions on how to do this. I'm thinking I should put
both
>> mailservers in DNS, and have the users configure their programs to
check
>> both servers, then remove the old server from DNS and once the old
>> server has no traffic remove it from the users configurations.
>>
>> I'd rather not see droped mail in between.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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