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Lotus Notes to On-Premises Exchange Migration Guide

This migration guide covers the steps of migration from Lotus Notes to an On-Premises Microsoft Exchange instance.

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

First migration?

We’ve created a guide to scoping, planning, and managing the migration process for your use. 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

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. 

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

Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes requires local software installation to use MigrationWiz, as there are no remote APIs for the messaging system. The Lotus Extractor is a small console application (a standalone .exe file) responsible for extracting data from the Domino server and securely streaming this data to the MigrationWiz platform. The steps and requirements to install this extractor are included in the Prepare the Source Environment section of this guide. After installing the Lotus Notes Extractor, you can then manage the migration from the MigrationWiz web portal (e.g., to stop/start migrations, view statistics, etc.).

Migrated Items for Lotus Notes (Domino Server) 6.5+ - 9.0.1 

Please click the bars 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

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

Not Migrated

  • Lotus Distribution Groups
  • All Documents view
  • Lotus Mail Groups
  • Journals
  • Items in the Trash folder
  • Resources field inside a Calendar event
  • Task alarms & reminders

Prepare the Source Environment

Set Up an Administrator Account

Set up an administrator account for migration on the Domino server. A single administrative account will be used to migrate all mailboxes. This means there is no need to specify a password for each user's mailbox.

  1. Open Notes/Domino Administrator.
  2. Select the server where the mailboxes are located.
  3. Go to the Files tab.
  4. Select the folder containing the mailboxes and right-click on it.
  5. Go to the menu to manage access control.
  6. Select the user to be used to perform the migration.
  7. Grant this account sufficient rights to access the mailboxes.

The administrator account will need to have the following included for permissions applied to each nsf file being migrated:

  • Access: Manager
  • Delete Documents: Enabled (This is not a default permission and must be manually selected, or your Domino server will run out of space very quickly.)

Perform mailbox cleanup

  • Mailboxes should be emptied of unneeded/unsupported data.
  • Old/unwanted email (this will reduce the time for migration).
  • Large attachments (any attachment larger than 150MB will not be migrated).
  • Unwanted mailboxes should be archived/deleted according to company compliance policies.

Synchronize Address Books

Synchronize users' personal address books on the Lotus Domino server. Lotus Notes contacts are stored locally on the users’ hard drives, in a local .nsf file. In order to migrate them, each user must synchronize their personal address book on the Lotus Domino server before the migration begins.

We recommend that you send an email to all users with instructions on how to synchronize their personal address books.

For Lotus Notes 8+ - 9.0.1

Lotus Notes versions after 9.0.1 are not supported.

Each user must proceed with the following on their own machine.

To synchronize contacts manually:

  1. Start the Lotus Notes client and open its session.
  2. From the File menu, select Preferences.
  3. Under the Contacts section, checkmark Enable "Synchronize Contacts" on the Replication and Sync tab.
  4. Click OK.
  5. From the Tools menu, select Replicate and Sync All.
  6. Click Open > Replication, or if Open List is docked, and click the Replication icon.
  7. Make sure that there is a checkmark next to Synchronize Contacts in the Enabled column and click on Start Now.

To synchronize contacts automatically:

  1. Open the Schedule.
  2. Set your Replication Schedule options and define when the replication should occur, when the client starts or is shut down, and click OK.

Then, under Schedule, select Enable Scheduled Replication for it to take effect.

For Lotus Notes 6 and 7

Each user must proceed with the following on their own machine:

  1. Start the Lotus Notes client and open its session.
  2. From the Actions menu, select Synchronize Address Book.​​

Set up the Lotus Notes Extractor

The Lotus Extractor requires that you have the .NET Framework version 4.6.1 or later installed on the computer on which you install and run the Extractor. To determine the .NET Framework version currently installed, follow the instructions provided by Microsoft: How to: Determine Which .NET Framework Versions Are Installed. The Lotus Extractor will require ports 80 and 443 to be open.

Do not deploy Lotus Extractor on a machine on which the Domino Server is deployed. Do not deploy more than one instance of Lotus Extractor on the same machine.

Running the Extractor now will result in a message that the Extractor is unable to find a mailbox connector. This is an expected message and is not a problem for this step.

Follow these steps on each machine that will run a Lotus Extractor:

  1. Install the Lotus Notes client on the machine (or virtual machine).
  2. Open the Lotus Notes client and log in with the same administrative account that was set up for migration.
  3. Retrieve the ID file for the administrative account being used for migration and copy it to the machine (or virtual machine).
  4. Ensure that the Internet proxy settings are correct on the machine (or virtual machine). If you are unable to connect to the internet with this option disabled, contact the network administrator to allow the Lotus Extractor.
  5. Close the Lotus Notes client. This will release the lock taken by the Lotus Notes client on the notes.ini file.
  6. Install the Lotus Extractor. It is available for download here.
  7. Once installed, start the Lotus Extractor.
  8. Each Lotus Extractor displays a unique identifier called Lotus Extractor Identifier, which is found at the top of the .exe window. See the screenshot below. Copy this identifier, because it will be needed later, during the migration configuration.

    LotusExtractor.jpg

  9. Enter your BitTitan account username and password.
  10. Enter the password of the Lotus Notes administrative account that was created for migration.

Each Lotus Extractor can simultaneously migrate up to 15 mailboxes. Therefore, once you have set up your MigrationWiz mailbox migration projects, you should go into Advanced Options and set the number of concurrent migrations to 15. 

Deploy each Lotus Extractor within the same Local Area Network where its target Lotus Domino server is located. Do not deploy a Lotus Extractor on a machine on which the Lotus Domino server is deployed. In the case of clustered Domino servers set up with replication enabled, a single Domino server has to be selected as a source of data for all migration activities using MigrationWiz.

Do not deploy more than one Lotus Extractor on the same machine. Do not stop a running Lotus Extractor. Leave the console window open; the migration will start automatically after the last step of the configuration. After authenticating, the Lotus Extractor will generate a CSV file named "LotusExtractor.csv". This can be used to bulk add users within your MigrationWiz project. 

The Lotus Extractor works with the Lotus Client to create a list of all users.  On initial startup, the Lotus Extractor will generate a CSV file named "LotusExtractor.csv" that can be used to bulk import mailboxes for migration into MigrationWiz. This file is automatically generated in the same directory as the Lotus Extractor executable. If the file already exists, it will not be regenerated when opened. If you need to generate a new CSV file, delete the existing one, and restart the Lotus Extractor.

Prepare the Destination Environment

  1. Set up user accounts.
  2. Create an admin account for migration that has full access permissions to all mailboxes.
  3. Set up a remote PowerShell session with Exchange 2010+.

Grant Access

To manually grant administrative access for migration, execute the following PowerShell command in the Exchange PowerShell Console:
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Add-MailboxPermission -AccessRights FullAccess -Automapping $false -User MigrationWiz

In the PowerShell script above, change the -User account to match the name of the admin account that was set up for migration.

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 throttling against the admin account.

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

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. There are other non-standard settings that can also cause size restrictions for the IIS or EWS connections, but we are unable to 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

There are three limits that 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 for each change.
  5. Change the existing value to maxRequestLength="200000" -- this occurs in one place in the Web.Config file.
  6. Change the existing values to maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" -- this occurs one place in 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" />
    etc.
  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, 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 for each change.
  5. Change the existing value to maxRequestLength="200000" -- this occurs in one place in the Web.Config file.
  6. Change the existing values to maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" -- this occurs one place in 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, 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 steps:

  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 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 file, 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

MigrationWiz Steps

Create a Mailbox Migration project

You will need to create one project per Lotus Notes Extractor. The server for each Source Server Name will be the Lotus Notes Identifier from the Lotus Extractor.

  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

Source Endpoint Destination Endpoint

For the Source endpoint:

  1. Click New.
  2. Enter the endpoint name.
  3. Endpoint type: Lotus Notes 6.5+.
  4. In the Server Name field, enter the Lotus Extractor Identifier.
  5. Create separate Source endpoints for each Extractor that you set up. These will be used when setting up your MigrationWiz projects. You will be setting up one MigrationWiz project per Extractor.
  6. The Lotus Extractor Identifier was generated when setting up your Lotus Extractor(s) and is at the top of the Lotus Extractor window.

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 Accounts

Add the accounts (also referred to as "items") to be migrated to the project. You can use the LotusExtractor.csv that was generated when setting up the Lotus Extractor to bulk add the users. You can edit the .csv before using it to bulk import. 

This generated file contains all identified user email addresses from the Domino Directory. Our Lotus Notes migration solution requires administrative credentials, so the “Source Username” and “Source Password” fields will not be used in either the LotusExtractor.csv or the Bulk Upload option within MigrationWiz.

Steps:

  1. Open the folder where the Lotus Extractor has been installed.
  2. Locate the LotusExtractor.csv file.
  3. Copy the LotusExtractor.csv file to the desktop or another location.
  4. Open the copy of the LotusExtractor.csv file from the saved location.
  5. Find the column titled Source Email.
  6. Delete all columns except the Source Email column.
  7. Make sure that all the email addresses in the Source Email column are the ones to be included in the migration.
    Note: Email addresses can be added or removed from this column without affecting the Lotus Extractor.
  8. Save the file.

This can then be copied into the Bulk Add form.

Advanced Options

The following options are most valuable for this migration scenario.

Support Tab

  • LotusEnableRetryOnGetMIMEFailure=0 This is used if Lotus Notes is configured to use rich text formatting (RTF) by default. This ensures proper MIME conversion of the formatted text.

Performance Tab

Set Maximum concurrent migrations. This should be set to 15. Each Lotus Extractor can simultaneously migrate up to 15 mailboxes only.

Source/Destination Tab

Set the project to use impersonation at Destination by checking the Use impersonation to authenticate box.

Run Verify Credentials

  1. Open the Project containing items you wish to validate.
  2. Select the items you wish to validate.
  3. Click 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.​ 

Run Migration

Notify users

Send an email to end users to let them know what to expect for their Outlook profile reconfiguration. 

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 migrating in batches and 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. 

  1. Go to Domino Administrator.
  2. Go to People & Groups.
  3. Select Domino Directories.
  4. Select Address Book.
  5. Select People.
  6. Edit the Forwarding address field to reflect the hosted mailbox name.

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. In order to determine the issues that were encountered while migrating your mailboxes from Lotus Notes, you will need to provide us with certain information that was collected during the migration process. For all Lotus Notes migration issues, provide the log files with your Support request. The required log files are LotusExtractor.log, Coordinator.log, and Heartbeat.log. The log files are located in C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\BitTitan.

Navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\BitTitan​ on the Extractor machine processing the migration, and locate all files starting with the following:

  • Coordinator
  • ​LotusExtractor
  • Migrator​​​​​

Add the log files to a zip file, and attach them to the support request.​ Archive and send that to Support.

Cannot Resolve Email Addresses

Sometimes we cannot resolve the email addresses provided by Lotus Notes. It happens when a user no longer exists in the Domino Directory (for instance, he/she may have left the company) or when the Domino Directory cannot convert the address.

In that case, we use the values returned by the Notes API to try to provide the most relevant information. The results may look like:

  • CN=John/O=Company@Domain
  • John Doe/Company@Domain
  • John Doe
  • John Doe <johndoe@company.com>
  • johndoe@company.com

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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