Transfers, migrations, and judgement

Three distinct operations sound identical when a client says "transfer the domain." Classifying the request before acting is the cheapest win in the entire track.

The pre-flight + sequence + the two 60-day ICANN locks. Knowing the steps turns a transfer into a deterministic checklist.

Dual-provisioning is the discipline that prevents the cardinal trap: build everything at the new host before pointing the world at it.

The most routine "transfer." Registrar and DNS host stay; only specific records change value. Sequence: confirm value, lower TTL, cutover, verify, restore.

The rule in 50 words: lower TTL, wait at least one current TTL, change the value, verify, restore. The wait is what makes it work.

The highest-blast-radius DNS operation a helpdesk tech can encounter. The safe-disable checklist requires an explicit sign-off step.

Web and mail records are different categories pointing at different hosts. Treating a migration of one as a migration of both is the common cause of "we changed something and the other broke" tickets.

The five-step routine that catches what the panel save doesn't. Saves the discovery from being the client's job.

Six commands, one calibrated summary sentence. The reflex routine for any unfamiliar domain.

The reflex test that sorts actions by blast radius. Different DNS operations sit at different points on the gradient; the test runs per-action, not per-shift.

The nine actions that cause the worst client outages. Memorise them so the reflex pauses the click long enough for the two-question test to run.

Sometimes escalate before; sometimes escalate-after-with-documentation. The framing rule resolves edge cases: senior time is cheaper than client-outage time.

Four failure patterns that show up across MSPs year after year. Each has a recognisable early signal in the ticket description.

The capstone. Twelve to fifteen scored scenarios that bundle multiple decisions per ticket, the way real work does.