Introduction
This article outlines the complete task flow for migrating mailboxes from GroupWise (version 7.0 and later) to On-Premises Microsoft Exchange, versions 2013+.
GroupWise may be running on Windows or Linux.
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.
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.
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.
The maximum individual file size that MigrationWiz can support is 60GB.
Prepare the Source Environment
Enable the SOAP endpoint
Enable the SOAP endpoint on each Post Office Agent (POA).
- Start GroupWise ConsoleOne.
- Navigate to GroupWise Agent Settings.
- Checkmark the Enable SOAP option to enable SOAP access.
- If the Source environment has multiple POAs, it will be necessary to open a SOAP port (typically 7191) on each POA.
Generate the user list
This can be generated through your GroupWise ConsoleOne portal. GroupWise migrations require both the email address AND the username, e.g., email address = testuser001@mydomain.com AND username = testuser001.
Single POA:
- If there is only one POA, you will only need to generate one user list and migrate all users from one MigrationWiz mailbox project.
If there are multiple POAs and they are not linked:
- You will need to generate a user list for each POA.
- You will then use these lists to add the users to each MigrationWiz mailbox project.
- You will create multiple Source endpoints, one for each POA, and include the IP address of the POA as part of the GroupWise SOAP URL, under the MSPComplete section of this guide. It will follow this format: <http or https>://<IP address>:7191/soap
If there are multiple POAs and they are linked:
- You will only need to generate one user list, which should include all users from all POAs.
- You will then use this list to add the users to a single MigrationWiz mailbox project.
- You will create only one Source endpoint and include the external IP address of the POA as part of the GroupWise SOAP URL, under the MSPComplete section of this guide. It will follow this format: <http or https>://<IP address>:7191/soap
Credentials:
- Create a Trusted Application Key. This is used to migrate from GroupWise using administrative credentials.
- Use the GroupWise graphical interface to register a Trusted Application key called "MigrationWiz".
- Ensure that the application name is set to "MigrationWiz."
- Make a note of the key value for the application key textbox. This will need to be entered under the Source endpoint in MSPComplete.
- For GroupWise 8 Support Pack 1 or later, use the graphical user interface tool to register trusted applications.
- For previous versions, use our command line tool to generate the Trusted Application Key.
- Go to the target GroupWise server.
- Log in as a GroupWise administrator.
- Verify the user has full access to the GroupWise domain folder.
- Extract zipped files to a local temporary folder.
- Run the EXE with the GroupWise database folder as an argument (ie., GenerateTrustedAppMigrationWizKey.exe C:\Novell\Databases).
Example:
- C:\>GenerateTrustedAppMigrationWizKey.exe C:\Novell\Databases
- MigrationWiz Trusted App Key Generator
- Configuring: C:\Novell\Databases
- Key Generated
- Key: 865A15420BA50008B…007BCF0085003000
If this doesn’t work on your environment:
The command line tool requires the NETWIN32.DLL, which is packed by Novel Netware client. If you get the following error: “The program can’t start because NETWIN32.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem” confirm that:
- The GroupWise client is installed on the computer.
- The Novell Netware client is installed on the computer.
If these are both installed:
-
- Go to a Windows machine.
- Log in as a GroupWise administrator.
- Mount a drive letter to the remote target GroupWise server (for example, net use X: \\GW-Server\c$ /u:Administrator).
- Follow the previously outlined steps using X:\Novell\Databases instead.
Prepare the Destination Environment
- Set up user accounts.
- Create an admin account for migration that has full access permissions to all mailboxes.
- 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":
- Open the Exchange Management Shell.
- Type the following command and press Enter.
New-ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy
- Type the following command and press Enter.
Set-ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy -RCAMaxConcurrency Unlimited -EWSMaxConcurrency Unlimited -EWSMaxSubscriptions Unlimited -CPAMaxConcurrency Unlimited -EwsCutoffBalance Unlimited -EwsMaxBurst Unlimited -EwsRechargeRate Unlimited
- Type the following command and press Enter.
Set-Mailbox "MigrationWiz" -ThrottlingPolicy MigrationWizPolicy
Verify mailbox accessibility using EWS
- Browse to https://login.microsoftonline.com.
- Log in as admin email address.
- Enter the exact same password as specified in MigrationWiz.
- Enter the Admin.
- Click on Users, then Active Users.
- Search for users entered in MigrationWiz to make sure the admin email address and the end user´s email address specified in MigrationWiz are not misspelled by searching for them.
- Make sure all users have licenses assigned to them. All mailboxes on the Source system are created as mail users in Office 365. When you assign a license to the mail user, it will become a mailbox user. We need a mailbox at the Destination in order to be able to migrate data.
- If you are not using impersonation, make sure the admin account has a license assigned to it. This can even be a temporary trial license.
Large Items
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:
- Open the Exchange Management Shell.
- 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:
- Open the Exchange Management Shell.
- 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:
- OpenWindows Explorer.
- Navigate to %ExchangeInstallPath%FrontEnd\HttpProxy\ews\
- Open the file Web.Config in a text editor, such as Notepad.
- Find the XML tag starting with for each change.
- Change the existing value to maxRequestLength="200000" -- this occurs in one place in the Web.Config file.
- Change the existing values to maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" -- this occurs one place in the Web.Config file.
- 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. - If you are running IIS7 and Windows 2008, it may be necessary to increase WCF settings.
- Save the file.
- 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:
- OpenWindows Explorer.
- Navigate to %ExchangeInstallPath%ClientAccess\exchweb\ews\
- Open the file Web.Config in a text editor, such as Notepad.
- Find the XML tag starting with for each change.
- Change the existing value to maxRequestLength="200000" -- this occurs in one place in the Web.Config file.
- Change the existing values to maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" -- this occurs one place in the Web.Config file.
- Change the existing values to maxReceivedMessageSize="200000000" -- this entry occurs up to 12 times. This needs to be changed for each Authentication method.
- If you are running IIS7 and Windows 2008, it may be necessary to increase WCF settings.
- Save the file.
- IIS Reset is not needed, web.config changes are picked up by the next connection.
You may increase the maximum accepted content length by following these directions:
- Open Windows Explorer.
- Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\exchweb\ews
- Open the file Web.Config in a text editor such as Notepad.
- Go to the end of the file.
- 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>
If you are running IIS7 and Windows 2008, you may need to increase WCF settings:
- Open Windows Explorer.
- Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\exchweb\ews
- Open the file Web.Config in a text editor like Notepad.
- Find all XML tags starting with maxReceivedMessageSize=
- Change existing values to maxReceivedMessageSize="104857600"
- Save the file.
- Open a Command Prompt (cmd.exe).
- Type: cd %windir%\system32\inetsrv
- Type: appcmd.exe set config "Default Web Site/ews" -section:requestFiltering -requestLimits.maxAllowedContentLength:104857600
- Run: iisreset
MSPComplete Steps
Create Customer
- Click the Add button in the top navigation bar.
- Click the Add Customer button on the All Customers page.
- In the left navigation pane, select the appropriate workgroup and then click All Customers.
- Click Add Customer.
- Enter the new customer’s information in the Add Customer form. Primary Email Domain and Company Name are required. The rest are optional.
- Click Save.
- 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:
- Sign in to your BitTitan account.
- In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
- Click the Select button and choose User Migration Bundle licenses.
- Enter the number of licenses you want to purchase. Click Buy Now.
- Enter a Billing address if applicable.
- Click Next.
- Review the Order Summary and enter a payment method.
- Click Place Your Order.
MigrationWiz Steps
Create a Mailbox Migration project
If there are multiple Post Office Agents (POAs) that are not linked, you will create multiple Mailbox Migration Projects and match the Source endpoint to the project that corresponds to the users on the POA.
- Click the Go to My Projects button.
- Click the Create Project button.
- 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.
- Click Next Step.
- Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
- 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.
- Select a source endpoint or create a new endpoint.
- To create a new source endpoint:
- Click New.
- Name the endpoint.
- Select type GroupWise 7+
- Enter the GroupWise SOAP URL.
- Click the Provide Credentials radio button and enter the Trusted Key for the Trusted Application Key that was set up under the "Prepare the Source Environment" section of this guide.
- Click Add.
- Click Next Step.
- If there are multiple Post Office Agents (POAs), and they are not linked, create separate Source endpoints for each POA.
- Select an existing destination endpoint or create a new destination endpoint.
- To create a new destination endpoint:
- Click New.
- Name the endpoint.
- Select type Exchange Server 2013+.
- Enter the OWA URL.
- Click the Provide Credentials radio button, and enter the admin account credentials for the account that was set up under the "Prepare the Destination Environment" section of this guide.
- Click Add.
- Click Next Step.
- Click Save and Go to Summary.
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.
GroupWise migrations require both the email address AND the username, e.g., email address = testuser001@mydomain.com AND username = testuser001.
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.
MigrationWiz allows you to bulk import mailboxes into the system.
To import one or more mailboxes:
- Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
- Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
- Click Add.
- Click Bulk Add.
- Follow the instructions on the page.
The Autodiscover process within MigrationWiz can be used to discover items from the Source environment, so that they can be imported into your projects.
There are few requirements in order for this to work:
- The Source has to be Exchange 2007 or later.
- The endpoint on the Source needs to use admin credentials.
- For mailbox migration projects, the admin account that is specified within the Source endpoint needs to have a mailbox associated with it.
- The admin mailbox must be listed in the public Global Address List (GAL).
One additional item to note here is that there is not a way to restrict the IP addresses that the connection will come from. This means that the steps outlined in our IP Lockdown guide will not apply here. If your environment requires that any IP addresses be whitelisted, it is recommended that items be added to your project using on of the other available options.
Autodiscover of items will not work while using Modern Authentication
Autodiscovery exposes the following items:
- For mailbox migration, autodiscovery will list all mailboxes at the Source.
Steps to Run Autodiscover
-
Navigate to the project you want to import users into.
-
Ensure that you have created an endpoint for the source project.
-
Once in the project, on the top navigation bar, click on the Add drop-down, then select Autodiscover Items. This will begin the Autodiscover process.
-
Once discovered, click the Import button, to import the items into your MigrationWiz project.
Add Advanced Options
Go to Support Options and add:
- Folder mapping: FolderMapping=”^Cabinet->Inbox”. This will map folders under the cabinet subfolder on GroupWise, to the Inbox on the Destination.
-
Set Maximum concurrent migrations. We recommend setting this to a very low value, such as 10, to ensure that server utilization does not go above 80%. 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 very high CPU utilization), we recommend setting this value to a lower number to avoid overwhelming the Source server with requests.
Run Verify Credentials
- Open the Project containing items you wish to validate.
- Select the items you wish to validate.
- Click the Start button in your dashboard.
- 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
- Select the users you wish to migrate.
- Click the Start button from the top.
- Select Pre-Stage Migration.
- Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago.
- Click Start Migration.
MX Record Cutover
Change over MX records on the DNS provider's portal.
Also, include the AutoDiscover (CName) setting.
Full (Delta) pass
- Select the users.
- Click the Start button from the top.
- Select Full Migration.
- 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.