Migrating services from the legacy to the new system

[John Hall]

My current 12-month accounting period for the services I get from
Gradwell is about to expire. Having examined the costs for those
services on the new system as specified on their website, I've decided
to stay with Gradwell (which might prove to be a mistake, I know). So as
the legacy server is I believe due to be switched off in a couple of
months, this would seem to be the logical time to migrate my website and
- more importantly - my email forwarding over to the new system.

Gradwell's online documentation seems to be incomplete, so I was
wondering if anyone had already done this, and could talk me through it.
Presumably I need to set up the new services before deleting the old
ones. Will the services be picked up in their new home automagically, or
is there something I will need to do, or will I need to ask Gradwell to
do that?
--
John Hall
"Think wrongly if you please,
but in all cases think for yourself."
Doris Lessing

[Charles Lindsey]

On Thu, 20 Jul 2017 10:27:53 +0100, John Hall wrote:

> My current 12-month accounting period for the services I get from
> Gradwell is about to expire. Having examined the costs for those
> services on the new system as specified on their website, I've decided
> to stay with Gradwell (which might prove to be a mistake, I know). So as
> the legacy server is I believe due to be switched off in a couple of
> months, this would seem to be the logical time to migrate my website and
> - more importantly - my email forwarding over to the new system.
>
> Gradwell's online documentation seems to be incomplete, so I was
> wondering if anyone had already done this, and could talk me through it.
> Presumably I need to set up the new services before deleting the old
> ones. Will the services be picked up in their new home automagically, or
> is there something I will need to do, or will I need to ask Gradwell to
> do that?

It's quite hard work, but doable. But you have to do much spade work
yourself.

Currently, you have MX records pointing to mail-in-1.lb.gradwell.net, or
somesuch. These are deletable (NOT YET!) and can be set to inactive (NOT
YET!).
When you activate your new Mail Account, it will create another MX
pointing to smtp.gradwellcloud.com (and maybe to mx.spamexperts,com).
These CANNOT BE DELETED, but can be made inactive, but are set up Active
by default. So first move is to render them Inactive (otherwise it will
try to send your incoming mail there, and it won't know what to do with
it).

Next, make a copy of all your mail forwarding rules, and configure the
same (or similar) rules in the new system. This is a manual operation,
but cutting and pasting will make it less tedious.

Now each alias you set up in your forwarding rules is potentially
editable by whoever "owns" that alias and knows its password. If you have
a large number of users whom you wish to allow to control their own mail
forwarding, that is fine and dandy. But if you want to control them
yourself, then you have to create a password for each one, and make sure
said user does not know it. Actually, I am not sure you even need to know
it yourself, so it can be any rubbish, and no harm in making them all the
same. Tedious, but cut and paste can speed things up.

So now you have your new forwarding aliases set up, and obviously you
have carefully checked them all.

So to institute the new regime, Activate the new MX and deactivate the
old. The Blue touch paper is now lit, so stand back and observe the
fireworks. If it doesn't work, you can revert to the old by deactivate/
activate, fix the bugs, and try again. Rinse and Repeat as needed.
Finally, the old MXes can be deleted.

Then you can configure spamexperts. Be aware that this is outsourced by
Gradwell, so your mail will go off via some cloud. Spamexperts
configuration is very good (but different from the old Gradwell
configuration). But I am impressed by its thoroughness in finding and
eliminating spam. The amount I actually see in my mail agent has been
reduced by a substantial factor, and only once did an email I was
expecting to appear didn't, and I had to dig it out of the discard pile
and then whitelist the site in question.

Naturally, YMMV

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At my New Home, still doing my own thing------
Tel: +44 161 488 1845 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: c...@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 40 SK8 5BF, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

[John Hall]

In message <eu1m2t...@mid.individual.net>, Charles Lindsey
<c...@clerew.man.ac.uk> writes

>On Thu, 20 Jul 2017 10:27:53 +0100, John Hall wrote:
>
>> My current 12-month accounting period for the services I get from
>> Gradwell is about to expire. Having examined the costs for those
>> services on the new system as specified on their website, I've decided
>> to stay with Gradwell (which might prove to be a mistake, I know). So as
>> the legacy server is I believe due to be switched off in a couple of
>> months, this would seem to be the logical time to migrate my website and
>> - more importantly - my email forwarding over to the new system.
>>
>> Gradwell's online documentation seems to be incomplete, so I was
>> wondering if anyone had already done this, and could talk me through it.
>> Presumably I need to set up the new services before deleting the old
>> ones. Will the services be picked up in their new home automagically, or
>> is there something I will need to do, or will I need to ask Gradwell to
>> do that?
>
>It's quite hard work, but doable. But you have to do much spade work
>yourself.

<snip>

Thanks, Charles. I ought to have posted here again a day or two ago to
report that - with a fair amount of help from Gradwell support - I do
now appear to have successfully completed my migration. But hopefully
your post will be helpful to others yet to take the plunge.

>
>Then you can configure spamexperts. Be aware that this is outsourced by
>Gradwell, so your mail will go off via some cloud. Spamexperts
>configuration is very good (but different from the old Gradwell
>configuration). But I am impressed by its thoroughness in finding and
>eliminating spam. The amount I actually see in my mail agent has been
>reduced by a substantial factor, and only once did an email I was
>expecting to appear didn't, and I had to dig it out of the discard pile
>and then whitelist the site in question.
>
>Naturally, YMMV
>

I forward my email from Gradwell to Gmail, which seems very good at
identifying spam, so I probably shan't bother with Spamexperts. (Though
I do look through my Gmail spam folder every few days, as it
occasionally flags as spam something that I want to receive.)
--
John Hall
"Three o'clock is always too late or too early
for anything you want to do."
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)