Domain Alias MX Confusion

[David W. Boles]

The Postini addition to Google Apps are fascinating. It seems a bit
rushed and clunky and cartoonish in its implementation but I'm sure
that will be worked out in the formal Google re-branding.

My question is this: I have successfully added sub-domains to my main
Organization with Postini and all my MX records for all domains now
reflect the Postini flavor.

It seems one would then be able to remove the domain aliases from the
GApps Dashboard/Domains because, as I understand it, those domain
aliases are there only for the MX records. At least that appears to
be the point and purpose according to that Domains page in our
Dashboard.

With the Postini MX records in place, why do we need those domains
aliased in our Dashboard?

Beware!

If you delete a domain alias from your Dashboard -- even with your
Postini-MX records propagated -- people will get an error message that
their message to you was undeliverable even though the message was
delivered. Here's an example of the error:

***

<da...@boles.com>: host bolesuniversity.com.s7a1.psmtp.com[64.18.6.14]
> said:
> 550 5.1.1 No such user r9si1452250nza (in reply to RCPT TO command)

***

The workaround is to delete your Postini MX records in your DNS Zone
file and put them back to their original GApps MX values and then re-
add your Domain via your Dashboard, have it verified, and then go back
a second time to delete the GApps MX records and and then re-enter
your Postini-MX records to get it all working again.

My questions is this: Is that an intuitive process for working with
MX records and are we require to leave those domain aliases in place
in our Dashboard even with Postini implemented?

Also -- is there a limit on the amount of Domain Aliases we can add on
the Postini side?

Thanks!

David W. Boles
Author of "Google Apps Administrator Guide"
http://bolesbooks.com/thomson/
http://BolesUniversity.com

[t...@postini.com]

Hi David!

Thanks for the feedback and information!

Yes, you are correct: you do need to have the domain aliaseses added
to both Postini and the Google Apps dashboard. The domain lists are
tracked separately, and mail to that alias will fail if either is
removed.

(The reason is that each system checks to see if the domain is listed
among the domain aliases, so that it won't accept mail to domains that
haven't been added.)

Hope this helps.

Ted Prodromou
Postini Documentation

[David W. Boles]

Thanks for the confirmation, Ted, that is very helpful.

So the number of domain aliases you can add are limited to the amount
supported by Google Apps.

Best,

db

[t...@postini.com]

> So the number of domain aliases you can add are limited to the amount
> supported by Google Apps.

Hi David!

Yes, that's correct.

Thanks,
Ted