Need advice on moving exchange server between offices 2

[texnut]

Hello all,

I'm hoping I can get some advice on our situation:

We will be moving offices in July. Along with this move, we will be switching ISPs and hence our IP block will change.

How can I switch our exchange server to the new IP block and not loose email for potentially 48 hours?

Any thoughts, advice and direction are much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[rliebsch]

Set your DNS to refresh every 5 minutes or so. So when you make the DNS changes (forward and reverse -don't forget to get the reverse taken care of), your MX records will change and propogate rapidly.

The rest is cake. I did an office move and had everything up, online, functioning in 4 hours.

Since you are at a new site, I assume you have a new router, switch, DMZ, etc. As long as all of that stuff is up and running, the MX change-over is the big gotcha. Well, that and getting the hardware moved, mounted, powered, booted and running.

It is going to be a LOOOONG night, but should go smoothly.

If you can get away with it, move you exchange server yourself, i.e., don't let the movign company touch it. You'll get it there faster, safer, and installed more quickly.

Good Luck

Robert Liebsch
Systems Psychologist,
Network Sociologist,
Security Pathologist,
User Therapist.

 

[BenChristian]

Make sure that you have a secondary MX record configured to point to a third-party (i.e your ISP). This will allow your mail to queue on your ISP's servers if when your exchange server is unavialable (during cut-over). Once the DNS records have propegated the queued mail will be delivered to your Exchange server. This will prevent your business loosing mail/generating NDRs.

Ben Christian
MCSE, MCSA:Messaging

http://www.benchristian.com

 

[texnut]

Hi guys - thanks for the tips.

So, just to clarify...

I should first set the record refresh rate to 5 minutes ... exactly how do I do that?

A) i.e. what is the command or action I should tell our DNS managers to perform? I think it is TTL right?

B) I should create a secondary MX record - Ben, are you saying I should make our secondary MX record the ISPs (our new one presumably) mail server? Is this a service all ISPs offer?

thanks for the advice so far!

 

[BenChristian]

1. Yep TTL. Check with your ISP about this (or however manages your public DNS).
2. Yes, contact your ISP, most ISPs will offer this feature, and it's good practice to have this in place permantly so that if your exchange server ever goes down the mail will queue on your ISPs server, rather than the sender just getting an NDR. You will end of with records like:

MX 10 yourserver.yourdomain.com
MX 20 mail.yourisp.com



Ben Christian
MCSE, MCSA:Messaging

http://www.benchristian.com

 

[texnut]

Excellent - thanks a million guys!

I will double check with our new ISP that they can provide us with this and get going with the configs.

 

[rliebsch]

do this now, no harm in having it run early.

then check the results on DNSSTUFF.com
They are pumping for membership, but you can scroll down and use their great tools. Or break out your terminal sessions and get dig going.

Robert Liebsch
Systems Psychologist,
Network Sociologist,
Security Pathologist,
User Therapist.

 

[texnut]

I most definetly will - as soon as I know what our new IP block and what the mail server of our new ISP is , I will make the change.