Goodbye Google G Suite Legacy Account, Hello MXroute

Digital Poof

Not A Bad Run

End of era sort of moment, starting to migrate off of my G Suite Legacy accounts.

Status

MikeBeane.com

• MXRoute account(s) created: Done
• DNS Updated: updated Nameservers at DP
• CloudFlare Success Email: Received
• SPF: Done
• DKIM: Testing
• DMARC: Pending
• Google Takeout: Complete
• G Suite Subscription: Cancelled

RabbiBob.com

• MXRoute account(s) created: Done
• DNS Updated: Pending
• CloudFlare Success Email:
• SPF: Pending
• DKIM: Pending
• DMARC: Pending
• Google Takeout: Test Completed
• G Suite Subscription: Active

BetaMountain.org

• MXRoute account(s) created: Done
• DNS Updated: Pending
• CloudFlare Success Email:
• SPF: Pending
• DKIM: Pending
• DMARC: Pending
• Google Takeout: N\A (Sub of RabbiBob.com)
• G Suite Subscription: N\A (Sub of RabbiBob.com)

Migration Steps

MXRoute

• Moved services to MXRoute
  • Control Panel->Account Manager->Add Domain
• Make sure you're under the correct domain
• Control Panel->Email Managers-> Email Accounts
  • create a primary email account for the domain
  • create a forwarder from the base account to the primary account
    • we should expect little to no email to the base account in my case as the address was derivative of my MXR account name
• Control Panel->Account Manager->DNS
  • Get DNS settings
    • DKIM
  • Update DNS at DNS service
  • DomainPeople couldn't take a txt entry for x._domainkey for DKIM and after trying variations, I moved things to CloudFlare
    • Set up DNS at CloudFlare
    • When all your records are there (website and mail, etc), go back to DP and update two items:
      • DNS NS entries
      • Home->Manage Services->Domain Names->Register Nameserver
        • Update NS here
        • Activate is needed
        • Click away and then back
        • Update DNS NS entries
        • WHY ISNT THIS WORKING NOW???

At this point, mail is flowing to MXR, but dkim/dmarc are not set up yet. I set up spf at DP until CF gets ported.

Settings

• SPF: ok
  • https://accounts.mxroute.com/index.php?/news/view/22/urgent--fix-your-spf-/
• DKIM: ok
  • TL\DR - your dns host needs to be able post the correct syntax
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6amwMvOzWw
  • https://mxroutedocs.com/dns/dkim/
    • At the time of posting, the directions are slightly different than the Control Panel
• DMARC: pending
  • TL\DR - your dns host needs to be able post the correct syntax
  • https://mxroutedocs.com/dns/dmarc/

Testing

• https://www.mail-tester.com/
  • Three free tests per day

DNS

• Edit your zone. In my case, I migrated to CloudFlare, which required updating

Old Notes

DNS

• DomainPeople - ran into some DKIM setup issues, most likely due to my inexperience with the source & destination
• Testing Cloudflare DNS - may swap back to DomainPeople if I can sort the DKIM item
• It could be that I'm in a pending status with DNS:
  • Check this out -> https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/zone-setups/full-setup/setup/
• Updated Nameservers this morning at DP using info here and in the DNS settings page as well. The nslookup results appear promising. Waiting for CF to update after the change.
  • and there's an email from CF! Congratulations! You have successfully activated mikebeane.com.

Checks

• References
  • https://prodmarc.com/knowledge/querying-spf-dkim-and-dmarc-records/

Verify Nameservers

• nslookup -querytype=ns (domain)

Verify Start of Authority

• nslookup -querytype=soa (domain)

Check txt (SPF)

• nslookup -type=txt (domain)

Check txt (DKIM)

• nslookup -type=txt x._domainkey.(domain) 1.1.1.1

  • Getting error on this return, probably the root of my issue

Check txt (DMARC)

• nslookup -type=txt _dmarc.(domain) 1.1.1.1

  • Getting error on this return as well

Quick List

nslookup -querytype=ns (domain)
nslookup -querytype=soa (domain)
nslookup -type=txt (domain)
nslookup -type=txt x._domainkey.(domain) 1.1.1.1
nslookup -type=txt _dmarc.(domain) 1.1.1.1

Thunderbird

• Been awhile since we've done this...
• Google Takeout .mbox integration has gone well