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  4. PST Migrations

Export to PST Migration Guide

Introduction 

This is the complete onboarding task flow for exporting either regular mailboxes or in-place archive mailboxes to PST (Portable Storage Table) files. 

For this scenario, the Destination is a Bring Your Own storage container on Azure. This will hold all of the PST files after the mailboxes have been exported to PST. The export of the selected mailboxes will be saved, in the Azure container, as one or more PST files per user mailbox. BitTitan Azure Storage is only available as a Source endpoint for PST migration.

A new PST will be created for every 10GB of data in a mailbox. This increases the export speed and leads to efficiency improvements.

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.

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

Prepare the Source Environment

If your Source server is running Exchange version 2003, or Small Business Server (SBS), refer to the Prepare the Source Environment section in the On-Premises Exchange 2003 to Office 365 Migration Guide.

  1. If your migration requires it, set up an administrator account for the migration.
  2. If your Source is Exchange, EWS must be working on the Source Exchange server. Read the How do I verify if my OWA URL is correct? article for more information.
  3. Test mailbox access. Read the Verify mailbox accessibility using EWS article for more information.
  4. Disable the Exchange throttling policy during migration. Read the How do I disable the throttling policy on Exchange? article for more information.
    Notes:
  • This is only relevant for Exchange 2010+. Exchange versions 2007 and earlier do not have throttling policies.
  • Follow the instructions under Option 1 in the How do I disable the throttling policy on Exchange? article to disable throttling for just the admin account, rather for than all users.

How do I set the Azure location?

This is a two-part process.

  1. Set the Azure location during the initial upload to Azure.
    • For this step, follow the directions in Installing and Using BitTitan UploaderWiz.
    • As directed in "Installing and Using BitTitan UploaderWiz," you must include the following parameter as part of your UploaderWiz command line:
      • azurelocation gov
        • Note: Available options are:
          • gov (government)
          • ger (Germany)
          • china (China)
  2. Set the MigrationWiz Advanced Option PSTCustomEndpointSuffix=(azure uri choice below) during migration, so that the migration servers know to look for PST files in that location.
    • From your MigrationWiz project Advanced Options, under Support/Support options, add PSTCustomEndpointSuffix=(azure uri choice below).
      • Note: The Azure URI needs to be changed to one of the following values:
        • core.chinacloudapi.cn (China)
        • core.cloudapi.de (Germany)
        • core.usgovcloudapi.net ​(government)

Note: It is important to understand that if Germany is chosen, data will still securely leave the country during migration, because compute resources are outside of the country.

Prepare the Destination Environment

  1. Estimate Azure storage costs. This step is optional but is useful in providing the customer with upfront storage costs ahead of time.
  2. Buy an Azure subscription, or use the free one-month trial ( this option is only viable if you are performing a very small migration).
  3. Create an Azure storage account:
    1. Log in to https://portal.office.com
    2. Goto the Storage account you have created for Migration purpose
      1. Click Access Keys for the access keys need to be entered when creating the Destination endpoint. We recommend that you create an Azure Storage Account in the same Microsoft data center as the Destination Office 365 tenant. 
    4. Take note of the Storage Account Name and the Primary Access Key.
  1. Create an Azure BLOB container. Take note of the name of the BLOB to be entered in the Bucket Name field in the project Advanced Options.

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.

MigrationWiz Steps

  1. Create the Mailbox Migration project or Archive Migration project (depending on whether you are exporting regular or in-place archive mailboxes to PST). Read the How do I create a new migration project? article for more information.
    • Create the Mailbox Migration Project or In-Place Archive Project > Select the customer 
      Note: If you are migrating a mixture of regular mailboxes and in-place archive mailboxes, create one mailbox migration project and one archive project.
  2. Create the Source and Destination endpoints. 
    • Click Source Settings > New > Enter endpoint name > For endpoint type, select Exchange Server 2003+.
    • Enter the EWS URL. 
    • Click the Provide Credentials radio button, and enter the admin account credentials for the account that was set up under the "Prepare the Source Environment" section of this guide.
    • Click Add
    • Click Destination Settings > New> Enter endpoint name > For endpoint type,select PST.
    • Enter the Storage Account Name.
    • Enter the Access Key.
    • When entering the Azure Storage Account Name for the destination endpoint, only numbers and lowercase letters can be used. If you enter an upper case letter, your migration will fail.
  3. Using Bulk Add, add the accounts, also referred to as "items", that will be migrated to the project:
      1. Sign in to your MigrationWiz account.
      2. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
      3. Click Add.
      4. Click Bulk Add.
      5. Follow the instructions on the page.  
    • The Source will be the SMTP address for each mailbox.
    • The Destination will be the name that you want for the PST file. It must include .pst at the end of each entry. A good format to follow is to name each file after the username that the PST file will belong to, e.g., user1.pst, user2.pst.
  2. Set the Project Advanced Options. 
    • Destination: PST > Container Name = migrationwiz.
      • If you did not create your own Azure container when preparing your Destination environment, this can be left as is, and the PST files will be exported to a container named "migrationwiz".
      • If you created an Azure container with a different name, this entry must be changed to match the name of your container.

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.​ 

Start migration

  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.

Post Migration

Optional (does not apply to Microsoft storage): Delete the Azure blob container that was created during the upload to Azure. This will prevent incurring post-migration Azure costs for these containers. Be careful to only delete the container that was created for this migration project.

 

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