Forum Moderators: mack
I have to transfer company A's domain to a new Web server. Company A relies on their email each and every day. How should I orchestrate the transfer so that I might eliminate all email downtime. Should I set up the email accounts at the new host prior to contacting the technical contact for transfer?
Thanks-
If that makes no sense, somebody help me out :)
1. Create new email accounts at new host, assign passwords and inform users.
2. Change nameservers to new host nameservers (do this late Friday evening, should resolve to new host by Monday some time hopefully).
3. Users set up a new account in their mail program with new password and other settings as appropriate.
4. Mail arrives at new site once domain resolves to new host.
5. Users can check if there is any mail on old host by using the IP of the site in their mail program settings, not mail.domain.com.
I have done this and it works fairly well. For a business site I think you should try and do this over the weekend as the DNS resolving is notoriously slow and unreliable.
Keep the users informed as to what is happening and it should all go smoothly :).
[edited by: aus_dave at 8:59 am (utc) on May 22, 2003]
a) Mirror the current settings on your own DNS servers, so that www still points to the current web address, mail is routed to the current mail server etc.
b) Change the TTL of the zone file on your DNS to 1 hour.
c) Have the Nameservers on the domain changed to yours. Have the old hosting company keep their settings the same (i.e. not to delete off of their servers as the site/email is still being served off of their hardware.)
d) When you're happy everything has been sorted out your end, change the TTL of the zone file down to 1 minute.
e) Wait an hour, make changes to the zone file pointing all services over to you.
f) Make sure everything is working properly :)
g) Change the TTL back to defaults of 2 day refresh.
JP
d) When you're happy everything has been sorted out your end, change the TTL of the zone file down to 1 minute.e) Wait an hour, make changes to the zone file pointing all services over to you.
f) Make sure everything is working properly
g) Change the TTL back to defaults of 2 day refresh.
'make changes to the zone file pointing all services over to you' - It's early, I'm not quite getting what the zone file is?
Do I go ahead and set-up the individual emails at the new host before I jump into any of this above?
- Thanks for your suggestions.
Your old host can make the changes for you or you can if you know your way around the server control panel (if you have access to it).
The DNS zone file contains various settings which control how mail, web pages FTP etc. are handled. You can get your old host to put your new IP in to these settings.
I'm way out of my depth now but this thread [webmasterworld.com] has some good info :).
First off, so I need to be in constant communication with the old host for changes to the TTL.
'make changes to the zone file pointing all services over to you' - It's early, I'm not quite getting what the zone file is?
Do I go ahead and set-up the individual emails at the new host before I jump into any of this above?
Yes, set up email accounts and web space before you make the DNS changes pointing everything to the new servers. This way, any email coming in to your new servers will go into an email account, rather than bouncing back to the sender as an error!
JP
The DNS record isn't hard to understand but a slip up will show itself in a big way. If you go this route, document what the current settings are in the record and then make your changes so you can get back to the working condition if it screws up.
The client has a website on their server. I have a host I want to move the website to. I've got the technical contact ready to give permissions...That's the extent of it basically.
