Skunks,
I have a scenario, i need to setup google apps email for students in a university, yet the already exisiting email accounts (for lecturers and HODs) should not be moved from their current email server.
i.e student mails will be maintained in the cloud, while lecturers emails (already working) will be maintained at the university's server.
How possible is it to have this kind of dual email handling? without ofcourse messing up the MX records of the already working emails..
First, you will have to create new subdomain (let's say students.the.existing.domain) and point the MXex for that to Google servers.
Secondly, you will have to get the students to change their e-mail addresses to something like student1@sub.dom.ain
At the initial stages of the separation of students and lecturers emails, you will have to employ some address rewriting rules on the current server for the purposes of handling the students e-mail address. The headers will have to be rewritten from:
student1@dom.ain -> student1@sub.dom.ain
This should only happen once the sub.dom.ain MX is setup, tested and running.
From there on, you will not add any students accounts on dom.aim but only on sub.dom.ain.
HTH