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. 

This migration guide contains the necessary steps to perform the actual migration, but there are many steps to preparing for migration. 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.

To discover what items are moved with MigrationWiz in this scenario, and which items will not be moved, see Moved Items. Note that these items will vary by source and destination, so check the proper environment listings carefully.

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.

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

• Some Hosted Exchange providers will not allow you to alter the throttling policies with your instance.
• Removing the throttling policy will allow for a higher through-put of migrated datat, however, this can impact server resources. Please pay close attention to the server resources when performing your migration and determine if your throttling policy needs to be change to maintain a healthy server resource level.

Preparing the Destination

Create Administrator Account

Create a Global Administrator or a delegated admin with full access rights or permissions account in Office 365 to be used for migration or use the Global Administrator or delegated admin with full access rights or permissions account for the tenant. In order to have administrative permissions to migrate mailbox data, grant the account permissions on each mailbox.

• Having administrative access to the Microsoft Office 365 control panel to manage users does not mean the same account has permissions to access all mailboxes for migration.
• Having delegated admin access to accounts does not provide enough access.

Enabling an administrative account the ability to access Office 365 user mailboxes can be performed by adding the Impersonation role or Full Access mailbox permissions.  The below steps will explain how to configure the permissions access for both options.

Impersonation

Full Access

Licensing

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.

1. 1. Sign in to your BitTitan account.
   2. In the top navigation bar, click Purchase.
   3. Click the Select button and choose the license type you need.
   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.

Create A Project

Create a Mailbox Migration Project

1. Click Go To My Projects.
2. Click Create Project.
3. Select a Mailbox migration type. 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.
4. Click Next Step.
5. Enter a Project name and select a Customer.
6. Click Next Step.
7. Select a Source Endpoint from the Endpoint drop-down menu. If an Endpoint has not been created, click New and provide the requested information in the Endpoint creation flyout window.
8. Select a Destination Endpoint from the Endpoint drop-down menu. If an Endpoint has not been created, click New and provide the requested information in the Endpoint creation flyout window.
   
   1. When creating the project on your Source Settings or Destination Settings tab, click New.
   2. Fill in the fields below. Once endpoint has been saved in the project, it will automatically be assigned to the customer that was selected in the Project Information tab when creating the project.

   • Name: Type any name you want for the endpoint.
   • Find My Service Provider: Use this control only if the endpoint you’re creating is hosted by a service provider and not a local endpoint. If you don’t know your server type, click this button and then click your provider in the drop-down list.
   • Endpoint Type: Click the Endpoint Type drop-down, and then click the appropriate endpoint type in the list. Ensure you have selected the correct source and destination. When you select an endpoint type, the form will expand so that you can provide additional connection information and credentials for that endpoint type. These additional fields vary depending on the endpoint type.
   • If an endpoint does not exist for the service that you want to connect to with MigrationWiz, then use the Generic endpoint type to generically store the web address for that service, a username, and password. This endpoint can still be used for Runbook execution.
   • Provide credentials: Select Provide Credentials or Do Not Provide Credentials as needed.
   • If you select Provide credentials, the form expands to present more fields for username and password. The credentials will be used by MigrationWiz to access the service selected. In most cases, you must provide credentials for an administrator account on those services, as this will enable MigrationWiz to have full access to the cloud service.
   • If you select Do not provide credentials, then MigrationWiz will request credentials from end users before a migration can be started, or before a Runbook can be completed. This may slow your migration, as you are now dependent on the end users to provide these credentials.
   • Domains: For migrations using G Suite Endpoints, this is the list of domains that you will be migrating to, or migrating from. This is not relevant to any other migration environment.
   • Use SSL: For some endpoint types, there is an SSL check box at the bottom of the form. Select this check box if you want to secure your new endpoint with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
   • Note that IMAP and POP endpoints include an SSL option (check box): If your provider uses SSL, you should select this check box and enter the SSL port number in the field provided. For IMAP endpoints, the default port number for SSL is 993. For POP endpoints, the default port number for SSL is 995.
   • If your provider does not use SSL, do not select this check box, and enter the non-SSL port number in the field provided. For IMAP endpoints, the default port number for non-SSL is 143. For POP endpoints, the default port number for non-SSL is 110.
9. Click Save and Go to Summary.

Add Accounts (Items)

Add the accounts that will be migrated, also referred to as items, to a project using one of the following options:

• Quick Add: This option allows you to add items o​ne at a time. You have to enter an email address, login name, and password for each user if you didn't enter administrative credentials when setting up the project. You only have to provide an email address if you entered administrative credentials when setting up the project.
• Autodiscover Items: MigrationWiz detects the mailboxes directly at the Source using Autodiscover. For more information, refer to Adding & Managing Items for Migration.
• For mailbox migrations, this feature is only supported when the Source is Exchange 2007 or later, when the Source is Office 365, or when the Source is G Suite.
• This feature is not supported for in-place archive migration projects, even if the Source is Exchange 2007 or later.
• Bulk Add: This option allows you to add multiple items at once by copying and pasting from a spreadsheet or by importing a CSV file. The domain names at the Source and at the Destination might be different. Make sure to provide the right information in the project. If they are different, it's best to modify these in your CSV file, and then use the Bulk Add feature to import the users into the dashboard.
1. Select the Project for which you want to perform the bulk import.
2. Click Add.
3. Click Bulk Add.
4. Follow the instructions on the page.

Set Advanced and Support Options

Advanced Options allow you to choose your notifications, filtering, maintenance, licensing, performance, and some configuration options.

Support Options are advanced configurations that make use of Powershell or code blocks to provide extra options or resources for your migration.

The following options are the most valuable for this migration scenario:

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. 
• 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.

Run Migration

The following sections will guide you through setting up and launching your migration. Each header is one step, with its component steps below. Follow these steps in order, and read the notes for important information about dependencies or best practices.

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

Notify Users

Send out the final notification that the migration is beginning. Include when the migration will start, expected duration, any usage instructions during migration, and any expected steps or notifications for the post-migration timeline.

If using DeploymentPro, refer to the sample email for some sample text and screen shots that can be included in this email.

Pre-Stage Pass

1. Select the users.
2. Click the Start button from the top, and select Pre-Stage Migration.
3. Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago.
4. Click Start Migration. 

MX Record Cutover

Change over MX records on the DNS provider's portal. Also, include the AutoDiscover (CName) setting. There are several options for this, based on the size of your project.

Small Projects:

Full (Delta) Pass

1. Select the users.
2. Click the Start button from the top.
3. Select Full Migration. 
4. Click Start Migration.

This migration will complete quickly since most data is migrated during the Pre-Stage migration; Office 365 to Office 365 migrations have high bandwidth available.