Please  be advised!

Saturday, October 4th 2008, between 2pm and 6pm EST we will shutdown mail service in order to perform server migration to our second CLE02 data center. We expect this process to complete with in 2 to 3 hours, however it may take longer for some users due to DNS propagation delays.

Please note: The IP address of our primary mail server will change, all customers that use our DNS service will have their "mail A " record automatically updated. If you manage your own DNS using third party service, you will have to manually update your records with an ip address we will post here.

 So, when will you be telling us the new IP address?

The following will be new mail server IP address:

209.190.184.120

 If you are using our DNS servers, these setting will be automatically updated for all domains. However if you manage DNS using third party servers, you will have to make appropriate changes yourself. We will begin the migration process shortly after 2pm EST, thus we advise all users to apply changes around that time.

The inbound e-mail will be spooled up on our inbound edge SMTP cluster and will be delivered once the primary mail server resumed operation.

Please note: DNS propagation may take anywhere between 1 hour to 24 hours complete. During the propagation period some users may resolve to old IP while others will resolve to a new one. Please refrain from opening multiple support tickets and calling our customer support lines regarding mail issues during that time.

Hi Skozyuk,
Very important that our customers with managed DNS elsewhere have their incoming email spooled and not lost during the move...
As well our customers that use the postini SPAM pre-filtering solution, this solution passes direct the the current IP address.
1) Can you confirm that no changes need to be made to the existing IP address of 65.91.41.220 for your spooling to take place?
2) And that once the new server is in place, all that we need to do is update with the new IP address?
3) Finally, can you confirm that contacts, calendars, etc.. maintained in the webmail will be moved to the new server?
Thank you,
Skip

Skip:

Hi Skozyuk,
Very important that our customers with managed DNS elsewhere have their incoming email spooled and not lost during the move...
As well our customers that use the postini SPAM pre-filtering solution, this solution passes direct the the current IP address.
1) Can you confirm that no changes need to be made to the existing IP address of 65.91.41.220 for your spooling to take place?
2) And that once the new server is in place, all that we need to do is update with the new IP address?
3) Finally, can you confirm that contacts, calendars, etc.. maintained in the webmail will be moved to the new server?
Thank you,
Skip

1) Our default inbound MX servers are located in the different facility and are not affected. Of course if you have custom setup, I cannot tell you how messages will be routed or how your spam filtering solution will handle this.

2) If you are using our DNS service, DO NOT UPDATE your "mail @ *.*.*.*" record. We have ascript that will automatically traverse all DNS zones and do that on a mass scale. If you manage DNS elsewhere YOU WILL HAVE TO UPDATE your own custom "A" records to point to new IP address.

3) We are physically moving entire back-end server with all the data in tact from one facility to the other.

I think I see a problem....
Both mx records and SPAM filtering delivery IP address is set to the 65.91.41.220 address...
What should this be changed to in order for your spooling to pick it up?
One of the MX record IP addresses?

MX records should never be pointing to an IP address, MX records should always be pointing to the "A" record of the inbound mail server.

By default all our customers MX records point to following host names:

cle02mxgw01.winsvr.net - Priority 100

cle02mxgw02.winsvr.net - Priority 100

Again, we cannot advise you regarding custom DNS configuration at this time because we have no knowledge of each specific circumstance. You will need to consult your network administrator regarding proper MX and DNS configuration in general. With this migration, all that will change is the IP address of the back-end server that is responsible for SMTP, POP3, IMAP, and web mail interface.

We are going to power down mail server in about 45 minutes.

The mail server has been successfully moved.  The mail server is currently running, but will not accessible for a while.  Currently we are updating our DNS to the new server ip address.  Once the DNS records are updated it may take a few hours for DNS to fully propagate everywhere in order for you to access your email account via the Smartermail webmail interface.  We appreciate your continued patience.

Everything looks good. There is already a number of users logged in to our mail server, which means DNS propagation is taking effect. In some cases DNS may take up to 24 hours to propagate due to caching at local ISP level.

As expected some users report "mail server problems" as they may be unaware of mail server IP changes and are victims of DNS propagation delay. To find out if your domain is resolving to a new server IP please follow these directions:

 Open windows command prompt and type in "nslookup mail.ihostasp.net". You can substitute mail.ihostasp.net with mail.your_domain.com.

If you see following in the output, this means your PC is resolving correctly to a new mail server IP address.

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    mail.ihostasp.net
Address:  209.190.184.120

However if the nslookup returns following, your PC still has not updated its DNS cache or your Internet service provider DNS servers have not refreshed its records.

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    mail.ihostasp.net
Address:  65.91.41.220

 To access web mail while DNS is propagating, you can use following URL.

http://209.190.184.120

The e-mail is functional, messages are being sent and received. DNS should fully propagate with in next 24 hours and you will be able to access mail server using a host name.

 I'm not able to get to webmail and I have verified that DNS is pointing properly. Are you having other problems?

 Message: The server at mail.ihostasp.net is taking too long to respond.

 Still down. Anybody working? No response to my ticket either. Atleast let me/us know you are working on it or that it must be a problem on my end.

Hi Drewmister,

I can't connect to webmail either, tried by mail.ihostasp.net or 209.190.184.120 although it pings fine and tracert shows a good quick route. Sit back and wait I presume.