RFH: New Email Infrastructure Deployment (31st January 03:00am)
We are very excited to announce the imminent deployment of our new highly anticipated email infrastructure which we have been discussing for the last several months. The new email infrastructure has been designed with a view to prevent the type of issues that have recently plagued the current email system whilst ensuring it can handle anything the future can throw at it.
Built upon high performance hardware with task-specific redundancy utilising the latest in mail server software and spam prevention technology from SmarterTools Inc; the new mail server software features a modern "Web 2.0" webmail client with support for simple inter-domain collaboration tools such as shared calendars, contact lists and email folders. Among many other new features, protocol enhancements such as SyncML for rich support of mobile devices and advanced reporting will ensure a welcome reception of the new email infrastructure.
Stage 1 - Mail Server ARGON
The deployment will start with the evolution of just mail server ARGON over to the new infrastructure, this is done to minimise impact and reduce the scale of any unforeseen problems.
On Sunday 31st January at 03:00am mail server ARGON will be taken offline so that all domains and their mailboxes can be relocated to new mail servers - this process will last up to an hour before we expect to be able to bring the mail services back online. Once back online we can begin the migration of all stored mail data on mail server ARGON over to the new mail servers - this process will take several hours due to the amount of data involved and the format conversions required, once complete the "missing" email data will simply "reappear" as expected in the mailboxes.
Stage 2 - Remaining Mail Servers
Following the successful evolution of mail server ARGON our remaining original mail servers will go through the exact same process - the scheduled outage details will be made in separate announcements.
Stage 3 - Front End Gateway Servers
Finally once all our original mail servers have been transitioned we will bring online the "front end gateway servers" which completes the new infrastructure - the specific details will be made in separate announcement though no scheduled outage will be required.
This layer of the new email infrastructure will isolate the new back end mail servers (which you access for POP/IMAP/SMTP/Webmail services) from the public internet, replacing the front end with separate mail servers specifically tasked only to take delivery of email and perform all the hard work of spam/virus scanning. This results in a system where the new back end mail servers are never under stress from spammers or denial of service type attacks and gives us opportunity to handle those events at the front end gateway servers without disrupting the services accessed by mailbox users handled by the back end mail servers.
This system is implemented through DNS - the MX records will point at the front end gateway servers and the mail A records (mail.mydomain.com) will point at the back end mail servers, behind the scenes the front end gateway servers will transport all legitimate email to the back end mail servers.
Notes and Frequently Asked Questions
Which mail server is mydomain.com hosted on?
This information can be found in the Helm WebHosting Control Panel, however the easiest way to access this information is to access the webmail service at http://mail.mydomain.com/ and look at the title bar of the webpage - it will say "using Mail Server XXXXXXX".
Will all my mail data be migrated over to the new mail servers?
All mail data (email messages) in the inboxes (and subfolders) of mailboxes will be migrated however due to incompatibilities the following webmail items will not be migrated and if essential should be saved prior to the deployment date:
- Spam in the quarantine folder
- Draft messages (email messages which have been composed and saved but not sent)
- Contacts and email addresses (webmail only, does not apply to those stored by your desktop email client)
- Customised mailbox settings such as "trusted senders" or tweaked spam options
Will I need to reconfigure anything, such as my current desktop email client (e.g. Outlook)?
No, all server access details (mail.mydomain.com) and login details (me@mydomain.com) will remain the same (with the exception of those affected by IP address changes, see below). Mailbox users who connect with an IMAP client may need to use the "reload/refresh folders" facility of the email client once the email data has been migrated to ensure those folders are correctly synchronised by the IMAP client.
Will there be any IP Address changes?
At all stages of the deployment there will be IP address changes - whilst this will not affect most customers some customers do not have their domains hosted on our DNS nameservers which means that we are unable to automatically make these IP address changes in the DNS zones for those domains. Since we are unable to provide the new IP addresses (due to the separation of domains onto different new mail servers) affected customers will need to make these changes with their DNS nameserver host after the mail servers have been brought back online, at this point the new IP addresses can be found in the domains DNS Zone Editor of the Helm WebHosting Control Panel which shows all the domains DNS records as they would be if hosted on our DNS nameservers.
Alternatively, we highly recommend hosting all domains on our DNS nameservers so that these changes and any in the future can automatically happen, where required it is possible to use the DNS Zone Editor in the Helm WebHosting Control Panel to set custom DNS records such as the setting of some services to be hosted off the Red Fox Hosting network.
If any of the above information is not clear, then it is unlikely to affect you.
Thank you for your continued support, should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us via the helpdesk at https://helpdesk.redfoxuk.com/.
Bookmarks