Use Google Apps for dual Deployment and Disaster Recover.

I have setup our Exchange Server, DNS Servers and Google Apps to Dual Deploy our email and to act as a secondary mail server.   In my opinion the best solution possible.

I looked at Google Apps before and didn't really see the potential.  Then my son in-law told me that you could use it and use your own domain with it and that got be thinking about the potential.  This is incredible.  You can have up to 50 users and each user can have 7 Gigs of space for emails.  That is more than I allow on our Exchange server.

Although I'm a big fan of MS Exchange I thought that maybe I could use Google Apps as a backup email in case Exchange fails.  I already have 1 Disaster Recovery solution in place.  I'm using Double-Take at a remote site to replicate our Exchange server.  Some would fill this is enough, but with Google Apps I have a complete solutions.

Here is what Google Apps offers me:

When our Exchange Server goes down and it does.  I don't have to fail over to the Disaster Recovery Site immediately.  Google Apps gives me time since the email will continue to flow to Google Apps we can continue to do business as usual.  I then have time to determine how serious the problem is, how long the Exchange server will be down and if we should fail over to our Exchange server at the Disaster Recovery Site.

I have a place for all the users email to be autoachive.  If they delete something on the Exchange server they can retrieve it on Google Server.

Here is how you setup Google Apps to Act as a Secondary email server and as an archive server.

1. You need to setup a Google Apps Account.  Choose the Standard Account if you have less than 50 users.  http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html
2. Once you enter your domain name or purchase the domain name then you need to verify that you are the administrator.  This can be a little tricky if you are using a production domain name.
3. Fortunately for me I have my own DNS servers so I was able to make the changes.  I used the html method to authenticate.   I setup my CNAME so that I could type docs.domain.com and it would go to the google docs website and I added the google MX host information to my MX records.  Now, you can either put them first and remove your current entry or you can get them the same values as your current email servers.  You will not be able to verify until Google see them as the top MX records.   I moved my current MX record to a higher value to verify my domain.  After my domain was verified I gave my current MX records a lower value so they were first.   For my sub-domain authentication I gave the google MX record the same value as my current MX records and google verified my sub-domain.
4.  Now I did the same thing to my internal DNS so that from my PC I could resolve the MX records from within my company.
5.  So in my CNAME I use that to give shorter URL to connect to my google sight.  The way I don't have to type the www.google.com/a/domainname.  Instead I can type email.domainname.com or docs.domainname.com.   In my MX records I have my subdomain that I setup at Google Apps with the same value as my MX records for my Exchange servers.  Ex:
@ mail.domainname.com. 10
gmailalias ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@ mail2.domainname.com 20
gmailalias ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20

Don't forget your "." after FQDN

This provides the ability to use DUAL - Deployment by way of the Alias "gmailalias".  There are more steps to getting this to work.  I'll explain those below.


6. To get emails to go to my Google Apps email if exchange goes down you need to add Google to your MX record as secondary email servers.  Below the enters above I have the Google Apps MX records.  In other words, if Exchange goes down the next MX record will be used to delivery mail for "domainname.  I'm not talking about the alias emails.  I don't get emails coming to me with the alias domain, that is used to forward emails to my Google emails.  So in my case the next MX record for my "domainname" is "mail-Dr" with a value of 20.  Well, my "mail-DR" isn't setup to receive email only to receive replication and I would need to manually failover and start the services before I would receive any emails.  So then the next MX record would be the google account.  So here are the Google MX records.




http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=22229&topic=22230