Introduction
This article outlines the complete task flow for migrating mailboxes from Hosted and On-Premises Exchange servers (versions 2007 and later) to Office 365.
We strongly recommend that you use HealthCheck for Office 365 to check ahead of time to see if end user hardware and software is compatible with Office 365. HealthCheck for Office 365 is a free utility.
Important: MigrationWiz is a migration solution (not a synchronization solution) and will NOT propagate updates, deletes, or moves of the items previously migrated in the first migration pass because 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.
If this is your first time performing a migration, we have created a Migration Planning & Strategy Guide to walk you through planning, set-up, and general migration best practices.
If you have already completed the migration preparation, simply follow the steps below.
Preparing the Source
Preparing the Destination
Licensing
Create A Project
Recommended Options
The following options are most valuable for Exchange to Office 365 migration scenario:
- Set to use impersonation at the Source. Checkmark the Use impersonation at Source box.
- Set to use impersonation at the Destination. Checkmark the Use impersonation at Destination box.
Read the How do I migrate to Exchange or Office 365 using impersonation? article for more information.
- Set Maximum concurrent migrations. To be very safe, we recommend initially setting this to 5. This means that when all mailboxes are selected and the migration begins, only the first five (5) mailboxes in the list will be migrated (using parallel processing), and then when the first of the five (5) completes, the next in the list will begin migrating, and so on down the list, through to completion of all mailboxes. 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 that the maximum concurrent migrations parameter be set to 30.
Comments
15 comments
this new check list is horrible bring back the old one!!!
This is the guide? What happened to the old one? This is a joke!
Hi, Zack and MITC Support Team:
We recently started an effort to refresh our Migration Guides, based on customer feedback we commonly received when resolving technical support issues.
We want to make sure that these documents, and all Knowledge Base articles, are as helpful as possible for our BitTitan customers. To that end, we invite you to provide detailed feedback on needed and desired changes to this article in the Comments section.
We pledge to review each comment and make appropriate updates as soon as possible.
Thanks for your help,
Larry Kaye
Manager, Knowledge Management
BitTitan
The documentation that used to be here had each step that needed to be completed and in which order it needed to be completed.
The current instructions simply state do x,y,z.
The old instructions stated step 1. Here's what to do with pictures. Here is step 2 with instructions. Etc.
It was nice to be able to go to one page and be able to walk through all of the necessary steps.
The instructions were so good that we simply created a link to the page and said do this.
We are now regretting that decision and wish we would have copied out the old instructions.
For example:
The old instructions (which we had a cached page of and grabbed ) said:
Create an administrator account in Office 365 to be used for migration, or use the global admin account for the tenant. KB004948
Set up accounts on Office 365 and assign licenses. These can be created in several ways:
The new instructions state.
Instead of a link on how to do each individual thing just declarative sentences of what needed to be done.
We really liked your product and praised the documentation throughout our office. Now not so much. Hoping you will go back to the ways things were.
Hi, Kris:
Thanks for the detailed feedback.
I will pass this along to our Migration Guide development team for review.
Regards,
Larry
I really wish this instructions page had more pictures. Had trouble finding the "Schedule Cutover " button.
Hello Tony,
Thank you for the feedback! I will pas it along to our Knowledge Management team for review.
Regards,
Nicholas
I have a little input.
1. I also had trouble finding the Schedule Now button, and altogether using DeploymentPro, it's a little confusing but its easy enough to figure out. A little nicer guides would make it seamless.
2. DNS Changes after migration? On-Prem exchange will cause all the work we've done to be meaningless. Competitors have that in their guides, somewhere.
On the creating a impersonation account, you are missing some steps for creating that role and assigning it to your 'admin' account.
Other little pieces missing here and there.
Hello,
I have completed my migration and it all seems to have gone smoothly, however I am now left with an SBS Exchange server 2007 that I need to get rid of.
Are there any special steps that need to be taken before I remove exchange?
Do all the old on prem mailboxes have to be transferred to Mail Enabled Users as per this article?
Thanks
@Thornton Springer - You don't SBS and Exchange are built-in and you will not have a good time. Simply disable/break down as much of Exchange as you can. I believe i deleted mailboxes, data store, and disabled services. Anything else you do will potentially need the SBS install disc for some crazy reason. For that reason, Anytime we have SBS, we leave Exchange on there, but broken as badly as we can manage.
Not sure why you want to convert anyone else to your hosted exchange... If you need to create MEU, just build them manually with a CSV export. That's my 2 cents
Hi Sean,
That's the problem, I need to remove the entire SBS server.
As we have ADSYnc running if I remove the mailboxes they then get screwed over on O365, so basically I need to get rid of SBS without damaging the mail attributes and then get a hybrid exchange up and running in it's place for management.
Ah. So you are syncing the MSEXCHGUID attribute up with ADSYNC? That is why, it thinks your mailboxes are local exch, and it's thinking you have a hybrid setup when you dont.
You might need to use ADSI edit to remove those attributes, then re-sync. Or potentially revert the sync from AD to cloud only, then re-setup AD sync but configure it to NOT sync the MSEXCHGUID. That was in bit titan documentation somewhere.
hi i have a question:
scenario:
local exchange 2010 to O365
do i have to grant "full access" permissions on O365 to the Migration account used?
thanks
Boaz,
You do not need to grant full access if impersonation is used. With Office 365 we recommend using impersonation and this is enabled by default for any Office 365 endpoint. Here is our KB that has more on this topic.
Should I use delegation or impersonation when performing my migration?
Thank you
Kyle
As for the new layout, i completely agree with what the other users are saying. While most of the documentation is there, it is harder to find. Of course, since using this product for a good number of years now, I may be used to the old style but i'm having to ctrl+f to find what I need whereas before it was laid out more concise and in logical order.
Can we get a URL to the old documentation?
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