Moving Mail Servers

Next weekend I am moving a mail server we have at OC as a secondary mail server over to Google's suite of online applications. This is for security purposes, as well as management purposes. It'll be easier for my IT team to manage a Google server than it will be to manage a server that if it breaks now, we will have no idea how to fix.

My goal this next week is to try and get IMAP working on the old mail server so I can convert all the mail to the new mail server. If I can't do this the easy way (IMAP) I am going to have to do it the hard way (POP and IMAP) which could take three times as much time as the other way. I know some of you don't understand the techy talk, but if you could pray for me this week I really need prayer for this conversion. It could end up taking me (and possibly Larry) all weekend if things go poorly. (Thank you!)

Speaking of things that break, we got a new backup system planned out at work and we are hoping it works better than the one we have currently. The plan is to run a Network Attached Storage device into our network (with about 1.5tb of space in a raid 5 configuration) and then run software that backs up our mail server and file server on a "version" basis. It'll back up up to X number of versions of the file (like the past 5 versions would be stored) and then those would be stored on the extra storage. Then once a week we would back that up onto a tape drive and take that off site. Right now we backup to the tape a couple times a week and odds are good that something will hang, crash, or corrupt when or while that tape is backing up. We've been praying we never don't have to test the quality of that backup. And now with the guy who was in my position before me actually gone to the other side of the world, if the system was to break (Lotus) I wouldn't be restoring the Lotus Domino system. I would be scrambling to get Exchange installed.

I guess the last time Lotus crashed it took 30 hours to get running again. I would be working on a solution (Exchange) that would get people mail back and then work on how to recover their old mail. Anyway, that is a little glimpse into the life of an IT guy living on the edge of backups. (And Lord willing we'll never have to test those backups, but I would rather have a system I knew worked well...)

Thank you for your prayers. Though it seems crazy I think Satan can sometimes attack technology to greater effect at getting to us then attacking us directly.

~B.