Installing SSL on Mail Server (Media Temple) for Email Migration to Google Apps

One of our clients was using the Media Temple mail server and wanted to migrate their email to Google Apps. So this was the task:

• Back up all email messages
• Change the DNS Records

Media Temple provides a great instructional article for completing this migration: How do I migrate email to Google Apps for Work?

In the article, they offer three different methods for backing up your emails:

1. Using the Google Apps Migration Tool
2. CloudTech Mail Migration
3. Manual IMAP Migration

Let’s discuss CloudTech Mail Migration first:

Media Temple provides a paid service for setting up Google Apps. But this service is only available if Google Apps for Work is purchased through Media Temple, and the cost is around $5.00 per month per mailbox, or $50.00 per year. For backing up emails, they charge $99 for up to 10 mailboxes. First we thought this might be a better approach, but when we gathered more information, we realized that if we cancel our Media Temple hosting at any time in the future, all of those mailboxes will disappear.

Here’s a transcript of a recent chat we had with Media Temple:

Coalition:

If we get Google Apps service, It means we won’t be using Media Temple’s Mail server anymore. So our mailboxes (which are currently on Media Temple) will be cancelled automatically when you guys will set up Google Apps. And if we cancel the hosting service with Media Temple in the future, It should not affect our email service (which will be on Google Apps).

MT Support:

What would happen is that the mailboxes set up through us would be removed, and you would need to set up the mailboxes into your existing google apps account.

Coalition:

Does this mean that mailboxes set up by you on Google Apps will be removed?

MT Support

Yes, that is the situation, and they would need to be reset at Google

So we decided not to set up Google Apps through Media Temple. Instead we opted to go with the Google Apps Migration Tool. We purchased a Google Apps subscription and set up Google email accounts for all of the users, and the next task was to migrate emails from Media Temple’s mail server to Google. It was more difficult than expected, because when we started the migration, we received the following error:

SSL error. SSL certificate may not have been installed properly on the source server. Please verify.

So what was happening?

Our client’s ecommerce site was hosted on Bigcommerce and their mail server was on Media Temple. We had the SSL installed on the primary domain but we needed SSL installed on our mail server as well (it was on external server at the same time). Read more on Google Support.

So we purchased the SSL from Media Temple. We then received an email from GeoTrust for approval and approved it instantly.

it will take about 15-20 minutes to have GeoTrust (our SSL vendor) have it keyed and ready to install on your DV server. Once it is, you can then continue and attempt to migrate your email to Google.

Media Temple Support

But it took longer than expected (more than a day). So after getting SSL ready, we asked if Media Temple could install SSL on the mail server (even if it’s a paid service). But Media Temple provides service for installing SSL on domain only (NOT on mail server). So we figured that we would have to do it ourselves.

Now follow these steps:

1. Log in to Plesk Admin
2. Go to Server > Security > SSL Certificates
3. You’ll get two certificates: 1. Default Certificate 2. Certificate you purchased for your mail server (eg: mail.domain.com)
4. Click on the Download icon to download all certificate components. You will receive a file with the name mail.domain.com.pem
5. Connect to your server through SSH (ssh user@host and then enter password.)
6. Go to /user/share directory (cd /usr/share) and create a file with the name mail.domain.com.pem (vi mail.domain.com.pem)
7. Open your downloaded .pem file in Notepad and copy/paste the complete content into SSH terminal (vi editor). And Save (Press Esc :wq and press Enter)
8. Now go to Media Temple support article and follow all the steps from #5 (Note: TLS_CERTIFICATE Path should be : /user/share/mail.domain.com.pem).
9. Followed all the steps? Success!! You installed SSL on your mail server.

Now go to your Google Apps admin console and use your Migration Tool. It will work like a charm.

Thanks to Media Temple for providing this support article: Change Default Certificates for SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 over SSL.