Hosted Exchange to G Suite Migration Guide

Hosted Exchange to G Suite Migration Guide

Introduction

• This is the complete onboarding task flow for migrating mailboxes from a Hosted Exchange Provider to G Suite.
• Complete each step in order. Links to corresponding Knowledge Base articles are provided.
• The MSPComplete section includes steps to deploy the Device Management Agent (DMA) to end users. This is an Agent which includes multiple modules, e.g., for HealthCheck for Office 365 and DeploymentPro. It is not required to install DMA for this migration scenario. However, BitTitan will be adding several modules to DMA, and these will be important to power MSPComplete feeds (which will provide further information to you about upsell and cross-sell opportunities).

 

Prepare the Source Environment

1. Ask the Hosted Exchange Provider to create an account for migration purposes (e.g., named MigrationWiz) and grant full access rights to each mailbox, by running this PowerShell script against the account called MigrationWiz:
   
   Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Add-MailboxPermission -AccessRights FullAccess -User MigrationWiz

• Notes:
• Some Hosted Exchange providers allow this access to be granted via their web portal. In this case, you could log in to each mailbox via their portal, and then grant the migration account (e.g., MigrationWiz) to have read/write access to each mailbox. Obviously this is laborious and time-consuming, and so it is preferred that the Hosted Exchange provider run the PowerShell script above, particularly if you have a large number of users.
• Some Hosted Exchange Providers will not grant this access. If that is the case, then you can request credentials from your end users during the migration. Exact steps for this are provided under Option 2 in KB005086.

If this is a very large project, the best results will be achieved by setting the project to use impersonation at the Source. In order to enable this, the PowerShell script below needs to be run by your Hosted Exchange provider. KB004727

New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role ApplicationImpersonation -User <admin_user_name>

• Notes:
• Many Hosted providers will not accommodate this request.
• The second part of this process is to set your MigrationWiz project Advanced Options to use impersonation at the Source. This step is included in the MigrationWiz section in this guide.

Test mailbox access. KB004616

Export mailboxes to CSV file(s).

• If you have admin credentials on the Hosted Exchange environment, you only need a list of the email addresses. You do not need the password for each mailbox being migrated (because MigrationWiz will use delegation and perform the migration based on the admin credentials).
• If you do not have admin credentials on the Hosted Exchange environment (which is common), you must obtain all the email addresses and passwords for the users.
• Options to obtain these:
• Ask the Hosted Exchange provider to provide them.
• If the provider has an admin console which includes this capability, run their tool to export the user list (and, if neccessary, the passwords) to the CSV file.
• If the list of mailboxes and passwords from the Hosted Exchange provider is not available, request that the users send these to MigrationWiz as part of the migration process. Video

Prepare the Destination Environment

1. Create users on G Suite. Refer to the G Suite admin help article here.
2. Grant MigrationWiz OAuth 2.0 access to G Suite. For guidance, see Enable access to G Suite using OAuth 2.0.

• Notes:
• If you are migrating to multiple domains, repeat these steps for each domain.
• G Suite as the Destination (full scopes):
  
  https://mail.google.com/, https://www.google.com/m8/feeds, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive, https://sites.google.com/feeds/

MSPComplete Steps

1. Create the customer. KB005421
2. Create the Source and Destination endpoints. KB005427

• For the Source endpoint:
• Click EndPoints > Add Endpoint > + Find My Service Provider button > click the down arrow in the Service Provider field, and select the Hosted Exchange Provider (taking care to select the correct version of Exchange that the customer is running). This will autopopulate the Outlook Web Access URL with their verified URL. (Or, instead of clicking on the + Find My Service Provider button, click the Exchange Server 2003+ button and manually enter the Outlook Web Access URL).
• Click the Provide Credentials radio button, and enter the admin account credentials. These are the credentials that you obtained from your Hosted Exchange Provider, when following the steps under the Prepare Source Environment section.
• For the Destination endpoint:
• Click EndPoints > Add Endpoint > Enter endpoint name > For endpoint type, select G Suite/Gmail.
• It is necessary to add ALL domains that will be migrated to. This means that if there are users in one project with domain names Sourcedomain.com and Destinationdomain.com, it is important to ensure that both of these are added under Your Domains when creating the endpoints. When you add a domain, you need to click the "+" button.
• Enter Administrative email address. Note: This is the account that has admin access level to the Google admin portal.

Purchase licenses. From your MSPComplete dashboard, click Purchase > Mailbox Migration > select MigrationWiz-Mailbox and enter the number of licenses you wish to purchase.

Note: Check to see if there are any available bundles for discounts (e.g., MigrationWiz-Mailbox and DeploymentPro Bundle). KB004647

Deploy DMA to users (optional). Once DMA has been deployed to users, check the Users tab in MSPComplete. This will be populated with the user accounts that have DMA installed. DMA can be deployed by these options:

• Via Group Policy Object (GPO). Note: This is the recommended methodology, because no end user interaction is required. KB005412 video
• Via email. KB005411

MigrationWiz Steps

Watch this video to see a walk-through of the steps below.

1. Create the Mailbox Migration project. KB004380

• Create the Mailbox Migration project > Select the customer > Select the Source endpoint > Select the Destination endpoint.

Add the accounts (also referred to as "items") that will be migrated to the project. Use the Bulk Add option, and import from the CSV file that you prepared under prerequisites section of this guide. KB004842

• If the list of mailboxes and passwords from the Hosted Exchange provider is not available, request that the users send these to MigrationWiz as part of the migration process. Video

Set the Project Advanced Options. KB004834

• The following options are the most valuable for this migration scenario:
• If this is a very large project, the best results will be achieved by setting the project to use impersonation at the Source (as documented in the Prepare Source Environment section of this guide). However, many Hosted providers will not accommodate this request. If they do, checkmark the box for Use impersonation at source. Note: Exchange impersonation (not delegation) utilizes per-user throttling quotas, which allows for a very large number of users to be migrated concurrently.
• If using impersonation, the value for Maximum concurrent migrations, under the Performance section, can be set to a very high value, e.g.,1000. Note: There is no limit for this value if using impersonation.
• If not using impersonation, we recommend that you set the Maximum concurrent migrations value to a low number, such as 20.
• Add folder mapping: FolderMapping="^INBOX/->" under Support/Support options. Note: This will map folders to the root label on the Destination mailboxes, rather than under inbox/labelname. KB005068

Run Verify Credentials. KB004511

Notify users that a migration is occurring. Send email to all users telling them the time and date of the migration.

Pre-Stage pass: Select the users > Click the Start button from the top, and select Pre-Stage Migration > Under the Migration Scheduling section, from the drop-down list, select 90 days ago > Click Start Migration. KB004938

MX Record Cutover. Change over MX records on the DNS provider's portal. Also include the AutoDiscover (CName) setting.

Note: If you are migrating in batches and mail 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. KB004315

Send email to end users to let them know what to expect for their Outlook profile reconfiguration. If using DeploymentPro, refer to KB005799 for some sample text and screen shots that can be included in this email.

Enable AutoDiscover again, so that users can create new profiles via AutoDiscover, or use DeploymentPro to automate the configuration of new Outlook profiles. KB005363

Full (Delta) pass: Select the users > Click the Start button from the top, select Full Migration > Click Start Migration. KB004938

Run Retry Errors. KB004658

Look through the user list and click any red "failed migration" errors. Review information and act accordingly.

If problems persist, contact Support. KB004529

If users will be using Microsoft Outlook with G Suite, they will need to follow the instructions here, to download and install G Suite Sync for Outlook and create a new Outlook profile that connects to G Suite.

Click the pie chart icon in the MigrationWiz dashboard to receive an email containing all the project migration statistics. KB004626