Continuing with our email platform migration we will be migrating our secondary mail server to SmarterMail from Merak during the maintenance window below.

The maintenance window for this is 15/04/2008 00:01-00:30

Users will not notice any downtime as this is a backup mail server

Update 15/04/2008 - 00:04
Work is now complete

On Sunday 06 April 2008 between 01:00 - 03:00 BST (GMT+1) we will be migrating all email users from our current Merak Mail Server Platform to our new SmarterMail Platform.

SmarterMail v5 will bring us far more stability and greater performance compared to Merak v9. Users will also be using a new webmail interface which is far superior to Meraks and is very close to Microsoft Exchange functionality. There are also near zero bugs in the webmail interface compared to Meraks rather buggy system.

SmarterMail is already setup and configured after 1AM we will run the migration utility which will convert current merak email accounts to smartermail accounts. There will be no loss in email or any changes to user’s passwords. All users still login to webmail, POP3, SMTP with the same information they use currently. We don’t have an exact time frame for the migration essentially this is down to how long the utility takes to run but we believe it should be under 10mins.

During this migration our backup mail servers both in the UK and USA will capture any incoming email, once the migration is complete email will be delivered to users inboxes.

If something major happens we can simply start Merak up again and disable SmarterMail until the issue is resolved.

If any users experience any issues please do contact support by phone (01253 808485), email (support@dhosting.co.uk) or by our helpdesk (http://www.dhelpdesk.com)

Update 02:28
The first attempt at the migration was not a success we have encountered an issue with the utility provided by SmarterMail. A support incident has been raised and we should have a response either Sunday or Monday.

Update 08/04/2008 - 18:42
The issue with the migration utility has been fixed and the migration has been scheduled for Friday 9th April between 00:30 and 01:00.

Update 09/04/2008 - 01:05
The migration is progressing and has been running for < 10mins so far. We have disabled SMTP and POP3 access due to the email files have to be converted and copied to new folders. Our backup mail servers are accepting email for all domains and will hold the email until the primary server is back online.

Update 09/04/2008 - 02:00
From 01:25AM SmarterMail has been handling all inbound and outbound email so far we haven’t seen any issues and mail has been flowing normally.

Webmail is available as normal at http://mail.yourdomain.com

Later on today we will alter our Helm config so users can add, remove or edit mail settings as normal. An update will be posted when this has been completed.

Update 09/04/2008 - 11:00
All users can now use Helm to manage their email configuration