Postini to Google Apps Migration

Earlier this year Google announced they would be taking over email filtering previously delivered by Postini, which it had acquired in 2007.

This led to large amounts of confusion for vendors and the transitions have inevitably been delayed as customers on the Postini platform refused to move unless it was feature matched by Googles “Apps” platform.

That day has now arrived and people are moving over in droves to the new customised Apps platform. Google has done a great job of price fixing the product for customers, as well as allowing them to upgrade their platform– for a fee– at a moments notice, in order to integrate and use other Google Apps services.

During our first transition everything went smoothly, except for Outbound filtering.  Our client was no longer able to send email from their domain, as they had done previously with Postini.

The following are our findings in resolving the matter at hand, and below is the easiest method we could find to achieve secure mail flow.

Google Apps has a feature called SMTP Relay where you can input your email servers IP Address and then relay your mail out securely through their filtering. To configure for SmartHost outbound perform the following.

Login to the Google apps login page with your Postini details (once transitioned)
http://admin.google.com

Click Settings > Gmail

Scroll Down to “SMTP Relay Service”

Press Edit and Fill in the details with your external IP Address (CIDR Format) Tick Require TLS Encryption.

Click Hosts, Edit to include Rules for your external IP on Port 25 and 587 (Will already be migrated but good to check)

Login to your Exchange Server > Organization Configuration > Send Connectors

Click Network and Select “Route mail through the following smart hosts” Press change and type in smtp-relay.gmail.com

Open Exchange Powershell and run the command “Set-SendConnector “nameofsendconnector” -port 465
This will set Outbound to go over TLS.

And that’s it!  If you have any issues, don’t hesitate to reach out to our IT Support Team or give us a call on (02) 8412 0000.