FTGate offers a seamless way to transfer mail from your old mail server to your new FTGate mail server.
When a user connects to either the POP3 or IMAP port of FTGate, FTGate will connect to the old POP3 server and try to log into the server using the supplied username and password. If the login is successful then FTGate will create a new mailbox with that username and set the password and other options appropriately. The mailbox will have a Migration message added to it so that the user will see a friendly message telling them that their mail is being transferred. FTGate will then start a separate process which will download the mail from the users mailbox on their old system to the new mailbox in FTGate.
Mail arriving at FTGate for mailboxes that have been migrated will be delivered to the local mailbox as normal. However, mail for mailboxes that have not yet been migrated must be sent to the old server. To allow this the administrator must create a remote domain that will send the undeliverable mail to the old server. This domain should be called something like "migrate.domain". The local domain should then be configured such that mail for unknown users is piped to this domain.
If the old mail server receives mail for a migrated user the user will not receive their mail. Thus it is recommended that periodically, during the migration period, the "Check Mailboxes" button is clicked. This will pull over any mail that is in the old system.
When all the mailboxes have been migrated from the old system, the remote domain that delivers to the old system can be removed, the undeliverable options in the local domain can be set to reject mail and the Migration option can be disabled.
A company (big-company.com) has an old POP3 mail server on an old PC that they wish to replace. They have purchased a new server PC and a copy of FTGate and wish to migrate their old mail to the new mail system.
The following steps should be followed:
Install FTGate on the new machine
Create a local domain big-company.com (Creating Domains)
Create a remote domain big-company.old set its delivery mode to deliver immediately and set the delivery host to be the IP address of the old server.
In the big-company.com domain set the mail for unknown users to deliver to the following email address
*@big-company.com|big-company.old
In the big-company.com set the migration options to POP3 migration and enter the IP address of the old server and a Migration message.
Change the users inbound and outbound mail settings to be the new server address.
When all the users mailboxes have been transferred the final stages of Migration can be completed.
In the big-company.com domain, undeliverable mail options set the mail for unknown users to reject mail.
In the big-company.com domain, click the "Check mailboxes" button. This will pull over any mail that arrived in the old system between the start of migration and completion of migration
In the big-company.com domain turn off migration
Delete the big-company.old domain
Migration is now complete and the mailbox and mail have been moved to the new FTGate system