How to Migrate to Axigen from an Old Server

The Axigen Mail server solution provides a nifty feature that allows server administrators to easily copy user accounts and data from the old messaging solution over to Axigen.

Since Axigen uses a different mechanism for storing information a simple process of copying files is out of the question. This article will describe all the necessary steps to perform a migration from the old server but before we proceed we need to review the requirements for this process.

The old server should provide the following:

- A standards compliant IMAP service. It is not essential that the IMAP server is standards compliant but we have a history of issues with IMAP servers that were not or with IMAP servers that had buggy implementations or exhibited various problems when migration was attempted.
- The SMTP service should allow the Axigen service to send messages without authenticating.

Our recommendation is to test how the migration process will perform for your particular case since this will allow the Axigen Technical Support Department to provide solutions if issues with the migration process arise before they become time critical.

Here is a simple test that can be performed even before a license acquisition decision will be made:

- Create a non existent domain on the old server. Since Axigen will communicate with the old server inside a private network (the migration process using a public network should never be considered due to security aspects) a non existent domain like "example.test" can be used.
- Create a test account part of the non existent domain.
- Send some test messages to the created account that should cover these conditions, one message for each condition:
      - Have a plain text body.
      - Have a HTML body.
      - Contains native language characters (in both: body and headers).
- Perform the migration of the non existent domain by following the steps presented further down in this document.
- Check the account's messages using a messaging client and the Webmail interface also.
- Contact the Axigen Technical Support Department if messages do not display as expected or errors during the migration process are encountered.

Now we will cover the steps required for the migration process to take place:

- Login to the Webadmin interface.
- Create the domains from the old server into Axigen.
- Click the "Automatic migration" button.
- Click the configure button for the domain required to be migrated.
- Enable the "Enable automatic migration for this domain" checkbox.
- Configure the migration for the desired domains by specifying the old server ip address or hostname. Please note that the ip address must be enclosed between brackets (e.g. [127.0.0.1]).
- Configure the ports on which the old server is running the IMAP and SMTP services.
- Ensure that the old server accepts connections from the Axigen machine without requiring authentication on the SMTP port.
- The accounts are migrated automatically as soon as users login to the Axigen server using the credentials of the old server.

When migration for a domain is enabled and a user that does not exist on the Axigen server tries to login, it's credentials are used to authenticate the user on the old server's IMAP service than all the user messages are copied over to the Axigen server after the account is automatically created on the Axigen server. If the migration is still enabled since it can take some time, depending on the number of users and data that needs to be copied, and a user needs to send a message, if the recipient is not local, Axigen relays the message to the old server which performs the delivery.

After all users have migrated from the old server disable migration before stopping the old server to ensure service availability.