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Zimbra to On-Premises Exchange (versions 2013+) Migration Guide

This is the complete onboarding task flow for migrating mailboxes from Zimbra (version 6 and later) to On-Premises Microsoft Exchange versions 2013, 2016, or 2019. 

MigrationWiz no longer supports TLS 1.0.  TLS 1.2 is now required. Verify the TLS version and update, if necessary, before migrating.

There are some tools and resources that will make the migration easier. We suggest you read through the following information and linked guides before migration. 

First migration?

We’ve created a guide on scoping, planning, and managing the migration process. If this is your first migration, we recommend reading this guide carefully.

MigrationWiz

MigrationWiz is a migration tool, not a syncing tool. If changes are made at the source after migration, they will not sync to the destination, nor will changes made at the destination sync to the source. We do not have “live” monitoring of changes (as with a sync agent) and we cannot handle scenarios such as conflict resolution without user interaction.

Prerequisites

It is important to highlight and meet the following prerequisites for a smooth migration project.

Licensing

We recommend that you purchase User Migration Bundle licenses for this migration scenario. User Migration Bundle licenses allow the performance of multiple migrations with a single license. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses.

To use your license by following the next steps:

  1. Purchase Licenses.
  2. Create a Customer.
  3. Apply Licenses.
  4. Review Considerations.
Purchase Licenses Create a Customer Apply Licenses Considerations

Purchase licenses by following the steps below:

  1. Sign in to your BitTitan account. 
  2. In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
  3. Click the Select button and choose User Migration Bundle licenses.
  4. Enter the number of licenses you want to purchase. Click Buy Now.
  5. Enter a Billing address if applicable.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Review the Order Summary and enter a payment method.
  8. Click Place Your Order.

Limitations

Please consider the following limitations for this migration scenario.

  • MigrationWiz supports the capability to share migration projects across a Workgroup. When the Project Sharing feature is turned on, all Agents besides those who are Inactive can view all migrations projects. 
  • App password usage, MFA/2FA, and ADFS are not supported for the migration service accounts being used for this migration scenario.

Migrated Items for Zimbra 6+

Please click the bar below to check the migrated and non-migrated items. We are constantly working to create a better migration experience for you so these items may change over time.

What items are and are not migrated?
Migrated Not Migrated

You can find the migrated items for this migration type in the following list.

  • Inbox
  • Folders
  • Email
  • Contacts
  • Calendars
  • Tasks

Exchange questions and troubleshooting

Our Exchange Mailbox FAQ, Exchange Migration Setup and Planning, and Exchange Mailbox Migration Troubleshooting guides contain many common questions and concerns, along with more information, guidance, and steps to resolve issues such as throttling.

Prepare the Source Environment

Users must enter usernames on the Zimbra side, even when using an admin account.

Export Users

Export the list of users to a CSV file. This will be used when adding users to your MigrationWiz mailbox project later in the migration.

  1. Open Zimbra Admin.
  2. Select Account.
  3. In the Search box, type the domain name to be exported.
  4. On the Toolbar Zimbra Admin, select the Download button.
  5. Save the CSV file generated.

Split Large Folders

Zimbra will exhibit poor migration performance for folders with several numbers of items. Please, split up folders to avoid performance issues.

Calendar folders can be slower to migrate when the data is complex. For example, recurring calendar meetings result in increased calendar events.

Prepare Admin Credentials

Guarantee that you have admin credentials available for use during the migration. If electing to assign the admin role through the Zimbra administrator portal instead of the below commands, the user must be granted Global Administrator. Assigning just an Administrator will not work.

You can prepare your Admin Credentials by using one of the following options:

  • Use existing credentials.
  • Create a new admin account for migration. This will create an additional admin account with the password of 'test123':
    zmprov ca testadmin@domain.com test123 zimbraIsAdminAccount TRUE
  • Transform a normal existing user account into an admin account (in this example future-admin will become an admin):
    zmprov ma future-admin@domain.com zimbraIsAdminAccount TRUE

Test Mailbox Access

Accessing the SOAP web services is needed for migration, so corroborate that the necessary ports are open to connect to the Zimbra server. There are two modes to connect to a Zimbra server, Regular and Admin User mode.

  1. In regular user mode, we need access to SOAP web services, which are typically the following:
    • On port 80 if it is an HTTP connection.  
    • On port 443 if an HTTPS connection.
  2. In admin user mode, we also need access to SOAP web services, typically:
    • ​On ports 80 and 7071 if the Zimbra URL is HTTP.
    • On ports 443 and 7071 if the Zimbra URL is HTTPS.

You must connect using both ports. Some operations will go over the admin port, while others the regular port.

Prepare the Destination Environment

Set up user accounts, then perform the following actions.

Set up Admin Account

To create an administrator account (e.g., MigrationWiz), perform the following steps when logged into the Exchange Server.

  1. Open the Exchange Management Console.
  2. Expand the Recipient Configuration node.
  3. Right-click on the Mailbox node.
  4. Click on New Mailbox.
  5. Click on Next.
  6. Click on Next.
  7. Enter "MigrationWiz" as the first name.
  8. Enter "MigrationWiz" as the user logon name, and optionally you can select a user principal name (UPN) domain.
  9. Enter a password and confirm the password.
  10. Click on Next.
  11. Click on Browse to select a Mailbox database.
  12. Click on Next.
  13. Click on New.
  14. Click on Finish.

To grant the account access, perform the following from the Exchange Server machine:

  1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.
  2. Enter the following command:
    Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Add-MailboxPermission -AccessRights FullAccess -Automapping $false -User MigrationWiz

Important

  • In the PowerShell script above, change the -User account to match the name of the migration admin account.
  • Any user account that is a part of the domain administrator, schema administrator, or enterprise administrator groups will not have any administrative rights to mailboxes, no matter how many permissions are granted. A security default of Exchange Server is to explicitly deny any user that is a member of these groups. This is why we recommend creating a new user account specific for migration.

Disable Throttling 

Disable all throttling parameters for an admin account called "MigrationWiz" by following the steps below:

  1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.
  2. Type the following command and press Enter.

    New-ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy

  3. Type the following command and press Enter.

    Set-ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy -RCAMaxConcurrency Unlimited -EWSMaxConcurrency Unlimited -EWSMaxSubscriptions Unlimited -CPAMaxConcurrency Unlimited -EwsCutoffBalance Unlimited -EwsMaxBurst Unlimited -EwsRechargeRate Unlimited

  4. Type the following command and press Enter.

    Set-Mailbox "MigrationWiz" -ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy

Test Mailbox Access

  1. Browse to https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com. This is a Microsoft-owned tool.
  2. If using Office 365, click on the Office 365
  3. Select Service Account Access (Developers)and click on Next.
  4. Specify the target mailbox email address.
  5. Specify the service account user name (if using admin credentials on the connector, enter the same user name).
  6. Specify the service account password (if using admin credentials on the connector, enter the same password).
  7. Check the Specify Exchange Web Services URL and write down the URL (example: https://server/EWS/Exchange.asmx).
  8. If using Exchange Server, do not check Use Exchange Impersonation. If you are using Office 365, and using impersonation, do check the box.
  9. Check Ignore Trust for SSL.
  10. Click on Perform Test.
  11. Once results are displayed, check the overall result and click on Expand All.

It may be necessary to first grant permissions.

Prepare Tenant to Receive Large Items

Increase Message Size Limits

This is a two-step process. The reason for this is that if the message size limits of Exchange are increased, the IIS limits will also have to be increased to allow increased payloads. Other non-standard settings can also cause size restrictions for the IIS or EWS connections, but we cannot troubleshoot or identify specific environment restrictions outside of these settings.

To display current message size limits:

  1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.
  2. Enter the following commands:

Get-TransportConfig | Format-List -Property MaxReceiveSize, MaxSendSize
Get-SendConnector | Format-List -Property Identity, MaxMessageSize
Get-ReceiveConnector | Format-List -Property Identity, MaxMessageSize
Get-MailBox | Format-List -Property PrimarySmtpAddress, MaxSendSize, MaxReceiveSize

To increase message size limits on the Exchange Server:

  1. Open the Exchange Management Shell.
  2. Enter the following commands:

Set-TransportConfig -MaxReceiveSize 150MB -MaxSendSize 150MB
Get-SendConnector | Set-SendConnector -MaxMessageSize 150MB
Get-ReceiveConnector | Set-ReceiveConnector -MaxMessageSize 150MB
Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -MaxSendSize 150MB -MaxReceiveSize 150MB

Increase IIS Limits to Allow Accepting Payloads

Three limits should be increased in IIS:

  • maxRequestLength
  • maxAllowedContentLength
  • maxReceivedMessageSize

Follow these steps to increase the Exchange message size limits on your client access server:

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Navigate to %ExchangeInstallPath%FrontEnd\HttpProxy\ews\
  3. Open the file Web. Config in a text editor, such as Notepad.
  4. Find the XML tag starting with each change.
  5. Change the existing value to maxRequestLength="200000" -- this occurs in one place on the Web.Config file.
  6. Change the existing values to maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" -- this occurs in one place on the Web.Config file.
  7. Change the existing values to maxReceivedMessageSize="200000000" -- this entry occurs up to 12 times. This needs to be changed for each Authentication method.
    For example:
    <httpsTransport maxReceivedMessageSize="200000000" authenticationScheme="Anonymous" maxBufferSize="81920" transferMode="Streamed" />
    <httpsTransport maxReceivedMessageSize="200000000" authenticationScheme="Basic" maxBufferSize="81920" transferMode="Streamed" />
  8. If you are running IIS7 and Windows 2008, it may be necessary to increase WCF settings.
  9. Save the file.
  10. IIS Reset is not needed since web.config changes are picked up by the next connection.

Follow these steps to increase the Exchange message size limits on your mailbox server:

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Navigate to %ExchangeInstallPath%ClientAccess\exchweb\ews\
  3. Open the file Web.Config in a text editor, such as Notepad.
  4. Find the XML tag starting with each change.
  5. Change the existing value to maxRequestLength="200000" -- this occurs in one place on the Web.Config file.
  6. Change the existing values to maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" -- this occurs in one place on the Web.Config file.
  7. Change the existing values to maxReceivedMessageSize="200000000" -- this entry occurs up to 12 times. This needs to be changed for each Authentication method.
  8. If you are running IIS7 and Windows 2008, it may be necessary to increase WCF settings.
  9. Save the file.
  10. IIS Reset is not needed since Web.Config changes are picked up by the next connection.

Increase Maximum Accepted Content-Length

You may increase the maximum accepted content length by following these directions:

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\exchweb\ews
  3. Open the file Web.Config  i n a text editor such as Notepad.
  4. Go to the end of the file.
  5. Insert or edit the following XML code before the </configuration> tag:
    <system.webServer>
    <security>
    <requestFiltering>
    <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="104857600" />
    </requestFiltering>
    </security>
    </system.webServer>

If XML code is already present in the Web.Config the file, and edit it to match what is shown above.

Sample Web.Config before changes:

<configuration>
<system.web>
...
...
</system.web>
</configuration>

Sample Web.Config after changes:

<configuration>
<system.web>
...
...
</system.web>
<system.webServer>
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="104857600" />
</requestFiltering>
</security>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

 

Increase Maximum Received Message Size

If you are running IIS7 and Windows 2008, you may need to increase WCF settings:

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\exchweb\ews
  3. Open the file Web.Config in a text editor like Notepad.
  4. Find all XML tags starting with maxReceivedMessageSize=
  5. Change existing values to maxReceivedMessageSize="104857600"
  6. Save the file.
  7. Open a Command Prompt (cmd.exe).
  8. Type: cd %windir%\system32\inetsrv
  9. Type: appcmd.exe set config "Default Web Site/ews" -section:requestFiltering -requestLimits.maxAllowedContentLength:104857600
  10. Run: iisreset

MSPComplete Steps

Create the customer

Each customer you add will be displayed in your customer list unless you archive it. There are two ways to add customers.

From the All Customer Page

  1. Click the Add button in the top navigation bar
  2. Click the Add Customer button on the All Customers page
  3. In the left navigation pane, select the appropriate workgroup and then click All Customers.
  4. Click Add Customer.
  5. Enter the new customer’s information in the Add Customer form. A primary Email Domain and Company Name are required. The rest are optional.
  6. Click Save.
  7. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for each customer you want to add. 

Add Button

Add customers from the Add button in the top navigation bar

  1. In the left navigation pane, select the appropriate workgroup.
  2. Click Add in the top navigation bar and click Add in the drop-down list.
  3. Enter the new customer’s information in the Add Customer form.
  4. Click Save.

    Important

    When you click a customer in the list in the main pane, the name appears under Recent Customers in the left navigation pane.

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration project

  1. Click the Go to My Projects button.
  2. Click the Create Project button.
  3. Click on the type of project that you wish to create. For this migration:
    • Mailbox: Mailbox projects are used to migrate the contents of the primary user mailbox from the previous environment to the new environment. Most mailbox migrations can migrate email, calendars, and contacts.

For mailbox migrations, use administrative credentials to access mailboxes. In most migration scenarios, the admin account needs to have full access rights to the Source mailboxes. 

  1. Click Next Step.
  2. Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
  3. Click Next Step.
  4. Select or create your source and destination endpoints.
  5. Click Save and Go to Summary.

Endpoints

Endpoints are created through MigrationWiz. If you select an existing endpoint from the dropdown, it will only show ten endpoints. If you have more than ten, you may need to search it.

Consider that endpoint search is case and character-specific. For example, Cust0mer will not show up if the search is customer. We recommend keeping a list of endpoints you have created, along with any unique spellings or capitalization you may have used.

Create your Endpoints

Please review the following tabs to create your destination and source endpoints.

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

Create your source endpoint by following the next steps.

  1. Click Endpoints.
  2. Click Add Endpoint.
  3. Select Zimbra 6.5+.

  4. Enter Zimbra server URL.

  5. Click the Provide Credentials radio button, and enter the admin account credentials. These are either your existing admin credentials or the credentials for the account that was created under the "Prepare the Source Environment" section of this guide.

  6. Click Add.
  7. Click Next Step.

Region of Destination Tenant

The Region of Destination Tenant feature optimizes the migration performance and speed by choosing the region closest to the destination tenant. MigrationWiz displays a dropdown that allows you to select the destination region when configuring your destination endpoint. 

Tip

You can find the region of your destination tenant directly in the Microsoft Entra admin center by going to Identity > Overview > Properties, and using the Country or region or the Data location.

Country or region.png

For more information on this topic, review this article.

Warning

If you do not complete this field you will not be able to save your project and the “This field cannot be left blank.” error will appear

Endpoint Validation

Once the information has been provided for both, the source and destination endpoint, and the customer selects Save and Go to Summary, MigrationWiz performs an endpoint validation check.

This validation tests the administrator credentials entered into the project and the Modern Authentication setup only. If there is an issue, the screen redirects to the endpoint and provides an error message or flyout that can be selected for more information regarding the error.

Add Users

dd the user accounts that will be migrated to the project. MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.

Important

The Username of the source mailbox needs to be for the user mailbox being migrated and not the Zimbra administrator account.

Use the Bulk Add option, and import the users from the CSV file prepared in the Prepare the Source section. 

  • If the Hosted Exchange provider does not provide a list of mailboxes and passwords, request that users send this information to MigrationWiz as part of the migration process.

To import one or more mailboxes:

  1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
  3. Click on Add.
  4. Click on Bulk Add.
  5. Follow the instructions on the page.

Advanced Options

Support Tab

  • ZimbraCalendarExpandInstances=1 You can expand calendar instances, in case Zimbra is missing calendars in the migration.

Performance Tab

  • Maximum concurrent migrations. We recommend setting this to a value, such as 5, to ensure that server utilization does not go above 80%.
    • If the Source Zimbra server is running low on resources, it can result in an email being migrated as blank.
    • If the Source server has enough server resources, set this parameter based on the bandwidth guideline of three (3) mailboxes per 1Mbps bandwidth.
      Therefore, for example, if there is a 10Mbps connection, we recommend setting the maximum concurrent migrations parameter to 30. In case of Source limited resources, such as low memory or high CPU usage, set a lower value to prevent server overload.

Run Verify Credentials

  1. ​Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
  2. Open the Project containing items you wish to validate.
  3. Select the items to validate.
  4. Click on the Start button in your dashboard.
  5. Select Verify Credentials from the drop-down list.

Once complete, you can check the verification results in the Status section.​ 

Notify Users

Inform users that a migration is occurring by sending the users an email with the migration time and date.

Run Migration

Pre-Stage pass

  1. Select the users to migrate.
  2. Click the Start button from the top.
  3. Select Pre-Stage Migration.
  4. Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago.
  5. Click Start Migration.

MX Record Cutover

  • Change over MX records on the DNS provider's portal.
  • Also, include the AutoDiscover (CName) setting.
  • Set up Zimbra mail forwarding.

Full (Delta) pass

  1. Select the users.
  2. Click the Start button from the top.
  3. Select Full Migration.
  4. Click Start Migration.

Run Retry Errors

Look through the user list and click any red "failed migration" errors. Review the information and act accordingly.

If problems persist contact Support.

Request Statistics

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics.

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