This article will guide you through the steps for migrating mailboxes from On-Premises Exchange servers (version 2007+) to G Suite. On-Premises Exchange 2003 will not work with this guide. 

There are some tools and resources that will make the migration easier.

First migration?

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

Exchange questions and troubleshooting

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

The maximum file size for migration through MigrationWiz varies by migration type and environment, but may never exceed 60GB.

DeploymentPro & DMA

DeploymentPro currently can only officially be used with migration projects where Office 365 is the Destination. If using DeploymentPro with Exchange (either On-Premises or Hosted) as a Destination, then a Proof of Concept should be run first. We do recommend using DeploymentPro in this scenario.

Exchange environments can have complex AutoDiscover settings, along with UPN and SMTP address mis-matches, which can require troubleshooting and reconfiguration before DeploymentPro can be made to work against such environments.

DeploymentPro is included with the User Migration Bundle license. DeploymentPro cannot be purchased as a standalone service license, and it cannot be added to the single-use mailbox migration license. If you wish to remotely configure Outlook mail profiles using DeploymentPro after a migration, purchase the User Migration Bundle license.

The DeploymentPro Guide and DeploymentPro FAQ will guide you through the proof of concept, as well as any other DeploymentPro questions, while the DMA Installation and Introduction to DMA articles provide resources and guidance on DMA.

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.

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. 

We are not able to support migrations with two-factor or multifactor authentication. 

Prepare the Source Exchange Environment

Admin Account

Set up an admin account for migration on the Source Exchange mailbox server.

Create an administrator account in Exchange to be used for migration or use the global admin account for the tenant. The administrator account must have either full access to the user mailboxes or be granted impersonation rights. We recommend using impersonation as it will help reduce the likelihood of the migration being throttled by Microsoft. 

1. Open the Exchange Management Console.
2. Expand the Recipient Configuration
3. Right-click on the Mailbox
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 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 -User MigrationWiz

The above command needs to be applied each time a new mailbox is created, since permissions are set directly on each mailbox. The administrative account will not have access until the permissions are applied.

In the above script, the username "MigrationWiz" should be replaced with the name of the administrative account that was set up, by following the earlier instructions in this article.

This username is the Administrative Username that needs to be entered under project source or destination settings, within MigrationWiz, when checkmarking the box labeled: Use Administrative Login.

Test OWA Access

OWA must be working on the Source Exchange server.

There are some instances in which the login page for OWA is different than the actual OWA URL for the mailbox, as you may get redirected to a different server after logging in. To determine the true OWA URL, perform the following:

1. Close all browser instances. This ensures that all session state browser cache is flushed.
2. Open a new browser instance.
3. Navigate to your OWA login page.
4. Log in to OWA.
5. Once you see the inbox, copy the URL from the navigation bar of the browser. This is the exact OWA URL that should be entered into MigrationWiz​.

Another method for determining the OWA URL is to use the "whatismyipaddress" website to determine the company public IP address, and then add /owa to the end of it.

Now that your OWA URL has been determined, we need to ensure that the username and password combination work. The username and password that you use to log in to OWA is the exact same username and password that you should be entering into MigrationWiz. To determine if your username and password is working, perform the following:

1. Close all browser instances. This ensures that all session state browser cache is flushed.
2. Open a new browser instance.
3. Navigate to the same OWA login page as determined by Step 5 above.
4. Log in to OWA. Pay special attention to the login name, i.e.​,:
• Email address means "user@example.com" format.
• Domain\user name means "example\user" format.
• User name means "user" format.
5. Once you see the inbox, you have successfully logged into OWA.  Enter the exact same username and password used into MigrationWiz.

Test mailbox access

1. Go 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 exact same user name).
6. Specify the service account password (if using admin credentials on the connector, enter the exact same password).
7. Check Specify Exchange Web Services URL and specify 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 also click on Expand All.

It may be necessary to first grant permissions.

Disable Throttling

Disable throttling against only the migrating account (if not using impersonation). This way, the admin account can migrate at a faster rate because it is not subjected to any throttling.

Use this option if using impersonation during the migration. If migrating using admin credentials, it is only necessary to disable throttling against the admin account, rather than all users.

If migrating mailboxes using administrative credentials at the Source, but not using impersonation, we recommend disabling throttling limits on this administrative account in order to improve the speed of migration.

We recommend the creation of a migration administrative account and disabling policy enforcement for this account.

Disable Admin throttling in Exchange Server 2010

To disable all throttling parameters for an admin account called "MigrationWiz":

1. On a computer that hosts the Microsoft Exchange Management Shell, open the Microsoft 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 $null -RCAPercentTimeInAD $null -RCAPercentTimeInCAS $null -RCAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null -EWSMaxConcurrency $null -EWSPercentTimeInAD $null -EWSPercentTimeInCAS $null -EWSPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null -EWSMaxSubscriptions $null -EWSFastSearchTimeoutInSeconds $null -EWSFindCountLimit $null -CPAMaxConcurrency $null -CPAPercentTimeInCAS $null -CPAPercentTimeInMailboxRPC $null -CPUStartPercent $null
4. Type the following command and press Enter.
   Set-Mailbox "MigrationWiz" -ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy

Exchange Server 2013+

To disable all throttling parameters for an admin account called "MigrationWiz":

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

Prepare the Destination Environment

1. Create users on G Suite. 
2. Grant MigrationWiz OAuth 2.0 access to G Suite. Note that Google is currently updating admin console UI, and the process is slightly different if this has occurred in your instance. Verify which version you have before beginning the steps below. 
3. Go to https://admin.google.com and authenticate as a Super Administrator.
4. Click Security. If you do not see the security icon on your admin console home page, you do not have the necessary rights on your account to make these changes. Request Super Administrator access from the customer to implement these changes.
5. Click Advanced settings. Google limits accessing and changing this setting to only G Suite Super Administrator accounts.
6. You will now have one of two options, depending on whether your tenant has been updated to the new Google API or not. 

7. Old Google Tenant:

   • Go to the G Suite admin page at google.com
   • Click on Security
   • Click on Advanced Settings
   • Click Manage API Client Access.

   OR If your account shows the latest UI updates from Google, as shown below:

   • Go to the G Suite admin page at google.com
   • Click on Security
   • Click Advanced Settings
   • Under ‘Domain-wide delegation’, click Manage domain-wide delegation
   • On the Manage domain-wide delegation page, click Add new
8. Click MANAGE DOMAIN WIDE DELEGATION.
9. Click Add New.
10. Enter 113321175602709078332 into the Client ID field. 
11. Enter the following groups of scopes into the OAuth Scopes (comma-delimited) field:
    
    • G Suite as the Destination (full scopes):
      https://mail.google.com/, https://www.google.com/m8/feeds, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive, https://sites.google.com/feeds/, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.settings.sharing, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.settings.basic,https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts 
12. Click Authorize.
13.  The client name is 113321175602709078332 (make sure there are no leading or trailing spaces, as this may cause the error "URL ends with an invalid top-level domain name."). This will grant BitTitan products access to the appropriate scopes.
14. If you are migrating to multiple domains, repeat these steps for each domain.

MSPComplete Steps

Create Customer

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. 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. 

Purchase licenses

We recommend that you purchase the User Migration Bundle license for this migration scenario. User Migration Bundle licenses allow multiple types of migrations to be performed with a single license. They also allow DeploymentPro to be used to configure Outlook email profiles. For questions on licensing, visit MigrationWiz Licenses

To purchase licenses:

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.

Apply licenses

1. Select the correct workgroup on the top of the left navigation pane. This is the workgroup that the customer and migration project were created under. Your account must be part of the workgroup if the project was not created under your account.
2. On the left navigation pane, click Customers.
3. Click the customer that employs the user to whom you want to apply a User Migration Bundle license.
4. Click the Users tab at the top of the page.
5. Check the box to the left of the email for the user(s) to whom you want to apply a license.
6. Click the Apply User Migration Bundle License button at the top of the page. It is recommended that users be added to the Customer page with the vanity domain. Then have the User Migration Bundle Licenses applied, before editing to show the .onmicrosoft domain, if the .onmicrosoft domain will be used for the migration.
7. If there is at least one unassigned User Migration Bundle license available for each selected user, click Confirm. Important: If there are no User Migration Bundle licenses currently available to be assigned and your role in the workgroup is Manager or higher, the form that appears provides all the necessary information and will walk you through the steps of purchasing User Migration Bundle licenses.

Deploy DMA to users

GPO is the recommended methodology because no end user interaction is required. However, DMA may also be deployed via email, which requires users to manually install it on their computers.

Once DMA has been deployed to users, check the Users tab in MSPComplete. This will be populated with the user accounts that have DMA installed.

DeploymentPro Steps

1. Launch DeploymentPro.
   1. Go to All Products > Device Management, click on DeploymentPro on the far left and follow the prompts to launch.
   2. Select a customer from the list by clicking on the customer name. The status column will show Enabled when a customer account has had DMA deployed to users.
   3. Configure customer DeploymentPro module:
   4. Enter the Domain.
   5. Select the Destination endpoint.
   6. Checkmark the Auto-populate option. 
   7. In the Client Interface Configurations section, upload your company logo and add supporting text. We strongly recommend doing this because this is the logo and text that end users will see in a desktop pop-up when they are prompted to reconfigure their Outlook profiles. If you do not upload your own logo, the default BitTitan logo will be included instead.
   8. Save and continue.
2. Activate DeploymentPro module for users by either selecting all users (by check-marking the box to the left of the Primary Email column heading), or select individual users (by check-marking the boxes to the left of the user email addresses).
3. Click the Schedule Cutover
4. Schedule the profile cutover date.
5. Set the date and time for the Outlook profile configuration to occur, and click the Schedule Cutover 
   1. The DeploymentPro module will install on user devices immediately and then run silently until this date.
   2. The profile cutover date should be set to a date and time that is shortly after MX record cutover.
   3. On the profile cutover date, users will be guided through the reconfiguration of their Outlook profile.

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.

Endpoints

Endpoints are now created through MigrationWiz, rather than through MSPComplete. The steps for this section outline how to create the endpoints in MigrationWiz.

If you are selecting an existing endpoint, keep in mind that only ten endpoints will show in the drop-down. If you have more than ten, you may need to search. 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.

You may either use existing endpoints, or create new ones. 

To create a new source endpoint:

1. Click Endpoints
2. Click Add Endpoint
3. Click + Find My Service Provider button
4. Click the down arrow in the Service Provider field, and select the Hosted Exchange Provider (taking care to select the correct version of Exchange that the customer is running). This will auto-populate the Outlook Web Access URL with their verified URL.
5. Or, instead of clicking on the + Find My Service Provider button, click the Exchange Server 2003+ button and manually enter the Outlook Web Access URL.
6. It is necessary to add all domains that will be part of the migration on either the Source or the Destination. This means that, if there are users in one project with domain names Sourcedomain.com and Destinationdomain.com, it is important to ensure that both of these are added under “Your Domains” when creating the endpoints. When adding a domain, you need to click the "+" button.
7. Click the Provide Credentials radio button and enter the admin account credentials. These are the credentials that you obtained from your Hosted Exchange Provider when following the steps under the "Prepare the Source Environment" section of this guide.

To create a new destination endpoint:

8. Click Endpoints
9. Click Add Endpoint
10. Enter endpoint name
11. For endpoint type, select G Suite/Gmail.
12. It is necessary to add ALL domains that will be migrated to. This means that if there are users in one project with domain names Sourcedomain.com and Destinationdomain.com, it is important to ensure that both of these are added under Your Domains when creating the endpoints. When you add a domain, you need to click the "+" button.
13. Enter Administrative email address. This is the account that has admin access level to the Google admin portal.

Add Users

Add the user accounts that will be migrated to the project. This may be done in several ways, depending on the size of the project. Steps for each option are in the accordion below, simply click to show the option you select and follow the guidance there.

Small Migrations:

For small migrations, it is easy to add users one-at-a-time using Quick Add. The steps for this are below. 

Larger Migrations:

For larger migrations, we recommend either using the Autodiscover or Bulk Add option.

Autodiscover will add all users found on the source tenant. This can then be edited in the project to remove users not being migrated. All users will be added with the source and destination email addresses set to match the source email. This can be changed by using the Change Domain Name button at the top of the project page. If the usernames are changing during the migration, we recommend using the Bulk Add option.

Bulk Add uses a CSV containing the source and destination email addresses for the users to add the users to the project. If migrating only a specific group from a tenant, we recommend using the Bulk Add option.

Add Advanced Options

Under Support/Support Options:

• Set Maximum concurrent migrations. If the Source server has enough server resources, set this parameter based on the bandwidth guideline of three (3) mailboxes per 1Mbps of bandwidth. Therefore, for example, if there is a 10Mbps connection, we recommend setting the maximum concurrent migrations parameter to be 30. If the Source server has very few available server resources (e.g., it is running low on memory or it has a very high CPU utilization), we recommend setting this value to a lower number to avoid overwhelming the Source server with requests.
• Add folder mapping: FolderMapping="^INBOX/->". This will map folders to the root label on the Destination mailboxes, rather than under inbox/labelname. 

Run Verify Credentials

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

Once complete, the results of the verification will be shown in the Status section.​ 

Notify Users

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration.

Run Migration

Pre-Stage pass

1. Select the users you wish 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.

If you are migrating in batches and mail coexistence is required, you will not be cutting over the MX records until your final batch of users has been migrated, and you must set up mail forwarding.

Mail Forwarding

If you are not cutting over an entire domain/organization at once by changing the MX records, you can perform a phased migration and set up coexistence by setting up forwards on the mailboxes you wish to migrate.

This can be done either through the use of PowerShell scripts, or through your Exchange Management Console. We do not recommend setting up Exchange email contacts and a DNS Internal Relay for this, since this will not allow for any Delta Migration passes to be made afterwards because the mailbox no longer exists.

By PowerShell:

Forward email to internal recipient and DON'T save local copy.

PowerShell command syntax:

Set-Mailbox -Identity <Identity> -ForwardingAddress <Office 365 User Email Address> -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $False

• Example: Set-Mailbox -Identity John -ForwardingAddress Suzan@o365info.com -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $False
• The email address specifed on the 'ForwardingAddress' parameter should exist as a Mail Contact.

Because you set DeliverToMailboxAndForward to false, a copy of the email will NOT be kept in the on-premises mailbox. When setting up forwards, make sure that you do NOT save a local copy before the forward. If you do save a local copy, then when you peform Delta passes, MigrationWiz will migrate the items that it previously hasn’t migrated (and watermarked). This will cause duplicates at your Destination.

Through Exchange Management Console:

The first step is to create the forwarding objects in your local Active Directory. These forwarding objects will be hidden from the address book, and will be used purely to forward mail for mailboxes that are migrated. Note that these objects are created but not used until you set the forwarding, so these steps can be done ahead of time.

1. Download our script to create forwarding objects to a computer that is joined to the domain.
2. Modify the script in a text editor (like Notepad) and change the forwarding domain in the top of the script to the temporary domain in the new environment, for example, company.onmicrosoft.com.
3. Run the script. You will know the script is complete when you see a confirmation.

The next step is to set up forwarding for mailboxes prior to migration. Before submitting a mailbox for migration, set the forward by performing the following:

1. Launch the Exchange Management Console from the Start Menu.
2. Expand the Recipient Configuration note from the navigation tree.
3. Click the Mailbox node from the navigation tree.
4. Right-click on the mailbox to set the forward for and click Properties.
5. Click the Mailbox Flow Settings tab.
6. Select Delivery Options and click Properties. Do not select the option "Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox". This is important to ensure that Delta passes do not cause duplicates. If you do save a local copy, then when you perform Delta passes, MigrationWiz will migrate the items that it previously hasn't migrated (and watermarked). This will cause duplicates on your Destination.
7. Click the checkbox Forward to, then click Browse.
8. Select the name of the user that contains the prefix (External Forward) in the display name. This is the forwarding object created previously.
9. Click OK.
10. Click OK​.

Notify users

Send email to end users to let them know what to expect for their Outlook profile reconfiguration. Samples and screenshots can be found in our DeploymentPro documentation.

Enable AutoDiscover again, so that users can create new profiles via AutoDiscover, or use DeploymentPro to automate the configuration of new Outlook profiles. 

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.

Outlook Configuration

If users will be using Microsoft Outlook with G Suite, they will need to follow the instructions here, to download and install G Suite Sync for Outlook and create a new Outlook profile that connects to G Suite.

Request Statistics

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