You're exactly right. You can sign up with Google Apps and start getting stuff set up there, but don't change your MX records, yet. Mail will still flow to the old server.
You can set up a domain alias at Google Apps and modify your DNS settings to point mail for that domain alias at Google Apps. For example, we set up a domain alias of pilot.watkins.edu and we created DNS records that point any incoming email that is destined for an @ pilot.watkins.edu email address to go to Google. Since this is an alias, people's actual email address is still @watkins.edu. Next, we set up forwarding on each individual account at Watkins to forward all email to that person's @pilot.watkins.edu email address (leaving an original on their watkins.edu account, just in case.) This means that when someone sends an email to [email protected], that message actually goes to our existing on-premise email server. When it gets there, a copy gets forwarded to [email protected], which delievers it to that users Google Mail account. That user is now using their Google Mail account to both send and receive email and everything works great. At some point (once all users are migrated over), we will change the DNS records for the main @watkins.edu domain and all email will start flowing directly to Google, not going through our email server any more. DNS records take a while to propogate, of course, but because we have it configured the way we do, if some mail goes to the old system, even after the switchover, that mail will still get forwarded to the appropriate place. A key of course, is migrating all the existing mail. I'm not sure if the free version of Google Apps includes the IMAP import tool or not. That's what we're using for most migrations. It just connects to our existing server over secure IMAP and brings over all the mail. Alternatively, there is a desktop app you can install that just uploads your mail from your system up to Google Mail. There are probably a handful of other ways to do migration as well, but those are the two most popular and the one's we're using. (We use the desktop app for Outlook users, because it also grabs their contacts and calendars and local folder emails.) Chris On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Andrew Farnsworth <[email protected]>wrote: > On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Chris McQuistion <[email protected] > > wrote: > >> Curt Lundgren and I are in the process of migrating everyone at >> Watkins to Google Apps. We love it. It took a whe to figure everything >> out but we have been doing a phased migration for the past couple >> weeks without any problems. >> >> I can give you more specific information and advice if you like, >> including instructions on doing a phased deployment that will keep you >> from losing any email. >> >> Chris >> > > Chris, > The first question I have is if signing up with google apps will > interfere with existing email and I think the answer is NO. Until you > change the DNS / MX records nothing will go there even if you setup with > google apps. > > Andy > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<nlug-talk%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en.
