What are the best practices for using Exchange Migrator? (NETIQKB2197)

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What are the best practices for using Exchange Migrator?

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Exchange Migrator 1.x

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Exchange Migrator 2.x

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Recommended Migration Process Outline

The key to any successful migration is planning and testing. Migrating to a new messaging system can be a challenging task. A successful migration depends on your ability to break the migration tasks into manageable steps. While each customer's requirement varies, the following common steps are recommended:

1. Identify your migration goals and desired resulting domain structure. Get buy-in from the appropriate people in your organization.

2. Assess your environment. What do you need to accomplish during the migration? Do you need to collapse Exchange 5.5 sites within an organization? Do you need to merge existing Exchange 5.5 organizations before migrating them to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000?

3. Staff the project based on your assessment and goals. Determine target dates for each phase of the migration.

4. Run real migration tasks using test computers and test data in a lab. Performing some lab work before your migration can help you become familiar with the migration tools and features. The closer your lab environment mirrors your production environment, the chances are better that your results will match the production results.

5. Run test migrations to identify potential issues, such as target email address naming conventions. These test migrations help you identify issues so you can address them before running the production migration.

6. Use Exchange Migrator as part of an integrated domain and Exchange 5.5 migration plan. Using Domain Migration Administrator to migrate your user accounts prior to migrating your Exchange environment provides more flexibility and control.

7. Start migrating portions of your production environment. Perform each migration task in a manageable chunk that you can evaluate to ensure a successful migration.

8. Perform post-migration reporting and assessment of your environment to ensure a successful migration.

9. Include user and help desk staff training before migrating to ensure the move to new software goes smoothly.

10. Perform post-migration clean up activities, decommission old environments, and remove older hardware that is no longer needed.

11. Implement flexible, policy-based management and monitoring tools, such as NetIQ Directory and Resource Administrator to ensure a secure and reliable mixed- or native-mode Windows 2000, Active Directory, and Exchange 2000 infrastructure.

 

Best Practices for a Smooth Migration

To ensure your migration goes smoothly with Exchange Migrator, consider the following recommendations:

• Create a temporary two-way trust between the source and target domains to ensure the proper authentication is available to Exchange Migrator.

• Make sure you apply the same Microsoft Exchange Service Pack on the Exchange Server computer and each Exchange Administrator computer. Some LDAP communication problems can occur if the Service Packs are not the same.

• Synchronize the time and be sure all computers participating in the migration are online and available before you begin migrating objects.

• No more than one user in a domain should migrate objects using Exchange Migrator at the same time.

• Alert your users to remove unneeded email items, such as sent items and deleted items, before you perform the migration. This can substantially reduce the amount of data that needs to be migrated.

• Use Domain Migration Administrator to migrate user a.
  ccounts and groups from Windows NT to Windows 2000 so you can more precisely control the migration options for these objects. Then, you can import the Domain Migration Administrator account mapping data to Exchange Migrator to ensure correct account matching as you migrate the mailboxes, distribution lists, custom recipients, and public folders.

• We recommend that you use Domain Migration Administrator to migrate user account passwords. However, when you use Exchange Migrator to assign passwords to newly-created user accounts in a Windows 2000 domain, be sure the password meets the password policy in that domain, or temporarily reduce the password policy requirements before you migrate.

The recommended order to migrate objects is (in an Inter-Org migration):

1. Use DirSync to synchronize source and target GALs.
2. Migrate Custom Recipients that you want brought over to the target.
3. Migrate Distribution Lists.
4. Migrate Public Folders.
5. Migrate Mailboxes.

After migrating each batch of mailboxes, run Synchronize and Update Migrated mailboxes and Synchronize and Update Migrated Public Folders.

The recommended order to migrate objects is (in an Intra-Org migration):

1. Migrate Custom Recipients that need to exist in the target site.
2. Migrate Distribution Lists.
3. Migrate Mailboxes.

In a site to site migration, Exchange Migrator does not support migrating Public Folders. If you wish move the Public Folders, use native tools to re-home them.  After migrating each batch of mailboxes, run Synchronize and Update Migrated Mailboxes and apply permissions to Public Folders by right clicking the project and selecting Update Source Public Folder Permissions.  Make sure the Public Folders and the newly migrated objects are fully replicated between all sites.

Exchange Migrator has several requirements to ensure it can perform the required tasks. For more information about these requirements, see "Exchange Migrator Requirements" on page 16 in the User Guide.

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Formerly known as NETIQKB2197