To anyone impacted by this. Here are a few things you might want to check, other than the obvious user mailbox migration.
0. Set your MX record TTLs as low as possible. Even if you aren't ready to change over yet, it will lower propagation delay when you are ready to cut over.
1. Lower your DMARC record TTL, and consider changing it to report only (p=none). If you keep it strict (P=reject), be sure to check your reports for rejections after any changes.
2. Aliases in rackspace aren't in the mailbox list export. This isn't just Bill instead of William, but also info@domain.com or helpdesk@domain.com etc...
3. Allow lists/block lists can be exported from rackspace, and imported in Microsoft but consider starting over from zero if you can. Allow lists are risky.
4. If you are using any advanced email threat protection tools such as Barracuda or Mimecast, they can queue email for re-delivery once the new MX is up.
My email is in my profile if anyone has specific questions.
I moved my company off of Rackspace last year. Absolutely terrible experience. The entire cloud operation felt like "brand harvesting" with the sole purpose of keeping clients locked in to the service. Lots of dark patterns and phone calls required to shut down individual servers. Rackspace is a dead man walking.
Yeah this. Their managed services were absolute dog shit. It required me emailing a filled in word document template to someone to get a firewall change done and then they would fuck it up. Eventually I'd get whichever engineer they had on the phone and talk them through how to do it. One firewall change used to take me at least 3-4 days to get through.
Now using AWS WAF which admittedly costs more but not in wall clock time!
Rackspace were bought by private equity 6 years ago[0], and then IPOed again a couple of years ago[1] at 21USD a share. On Friday they were down 9c to $4.85.
Thanks for sharing. I was about to ask what happened to Rackspace. I distantly remember 2012ish or early to be when Rackspace was quite famous and I thought they were just an amazing company for some reason.
They were great around those years. I launched a SaaS product on Rackspace’s cloud in 2013.
The support was top-notch. I could call a phone number and within minutes be on with the engineer who could actually fix an issue.
That changed around 2016 and support went downhill. Then the cloud product started to fall. When we engaged Rackspace, they suggested we migrate to AWS. So, we did.
Rackspace is a dinosaur and their main problems have really come from failure to adapt to the changing times - but for them it has been a hard pivot. Back in the early 00s rackspace was know for excellent service and support which you paid a premium for this. They began to get under cut first by the unmanaged server space where you could get a 99 server for their 500+ / month. When the price is so different it is hard to pivot because execs are looking only at the bottom line. Then vps -> cloud came further undercutting them and the cloud services that are mostly self serve took off. Now they are still left with fanatical support as their tag line , higher cost , but no longer investing in this fanatical support. This becomes just a business case of you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I spoke to a senior Rackspace engineer about a year ago. He said that rackspace were looking to leave hosted exchange market and push all of their customers to Microsoft O365 ASAP.
Looks like this outage will have helped them out a lot with that challenge.
Connoting that negative effects occurred for the sufferer. The assertion here is that this connotation is inappropriate because the sufferer in this case benefited in the long term.
0. Set your MX record TTLs as low as possible. Even if you aren't ready to change over yet, it will lower propagation delay when you are ready to cut over.
1. Lower your DMARC record TTL, and consider changing it to report only (p=none). If you keep it strict (P=reject), be sure to check your reports for rejections after any changes.
2. Aliases in rackspace aren't in the mailbox list export. This isn't just Bill instead of William, but also info@domain.com or helpdesk@domain.com etc...
3. Allow lists/block lists can be exported from rackspace, and imported in Microsoft but consider starting over from zero if you can. Allow lists are risky.
4. If you are using any advanced email threat protection tools such as Barracuda or Mimecast, they can queue email for re-delivery once the new MX is up.
My email is in my profile if anyone has specific questions.