Servers For Less Web Hosting

Providing secure, reliable hosting since 1997.

Migration to the new servers

Hello, 

You are reading this page because you have gotten a email letting you know that your account is being migrated to new servers.

Why the migration?

While the servers that Tech Valley / Servers For Less are constantly being improved and upgraded, the software that manages them is now at the end of its software life cycle.  Because of that, the servers are being replaced with servers that are managed by better, more current software.

What does this mean to you?

If you run virtual servers at Tech Valley or Servers For Less, probably nothing.  The servers will automatically converted so that they can run with the new management software.

If you have web sites hosted by Tech Valley, they will be automatically moved over to the new servers.  The only things that may change with them is that FTP accounts may need to be recreated on the new server to allow you access to them.

If you send and receive email through Tech Valley, you will have to set up a new email account on your client software.

Best way to migrate your email to the new servers...

In the email that you received, you will be given a date and time that the DNS servers will start pointing to the new servers.  Generally this will happen between 10pm and 12pm on the day mentioned in the email.  Although these changes will be instantaneous on our local servers, these changes could take up to 48 hours to populate through all the servers around the world.  However, most DNS servers will know of the changes within 6 hours of the changes taking place.

Sorry, got a bit technical there!  What this means to you is that if we make the changes to the new servers between 10pm and 12pm at night, you should be able to use the new servers when you wake up in the morning.

To verify this do the following:

  • In Windows, click on the Start button
  • Then in "Search Programs and Files" type cmd
  • Hit Enter
  • A black window will open with a white command prompt flashing in it.
  • Click on the window.
  • Type nslookup mail.<your domain>  ie. "nslookup mail.techvalley.ca"
  • As seen below, if your computer and it's upstream providers are using the new DNS settings for your domain then the address returned will be "66.196.43.134"


  • If nslookup returns anything else but "66.196.43.134" then periodically chech nslookup throughout the day for it to return this IP and wait until your DNS servers to report the correct ip.
  • While waiting, your email client should still work to send and receive email from the old mail server.  But you also have the following options to make sure that you don't miss any emails...
    • To send and receive email from the old server:
    • To check for any new email hitting the new server that you don't have access to yet:
  • Once nslookup is reporting "66.196.43.134" as your mail server IP then you can proceed below to setting up your email client to work with the new servers.
    • If your email client accessed the old server as a POP3 server then you may want to keep the account set up in your email client so that you have a copy of all the old emails you have sent and received in the past.  Or you can delete the account if this is not important to you.
    • If you email client accessed the old server as an IMAP server then you should delete the old account in preparation for the new one.  The old server already has a copy of all your old email and this will be migrated over to the new server.
      Note: It may take 24 hours from the start of the migration process for mail from the old server to be copied to the new one.)
  • To setup your email client to work with the new servers, use the information from the email that you were sent along with one of the following 3 how to's:


As always, if you have any problems with this set up process, please don't hesitate to contact us by email or phone.

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