GroupWise to MS Exchange Server Migration Tips

Owing to the advancement in technologies, companies are now planning to migrate from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 with an aim to reap maximum benefits indeed. Undoubtedly, in the recent past Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 had took a colossal leap frontward in terms of flexibility of incorporation, cost of ownership and of course ease of management and exercise. Its capability for online deployments and to integrate on-premises closely is the crucial aspect of new functionality of the server. Migrating to Exchange Server 2010 can offer several visible benefits to the business. So, below is the list of few important tips to assist you accomplish the migration process smoothly and prevent all challenges, guaranteeing you impeccable move.

 

Must Perform Pre-Migration Review

Before you start the migration process, it is quite crucial for you to understand clearly what will be involved in the process and what criterions you will be using to evaluate successfully accomplishment. Remember, it is not necessary that each message in GroupWise will remain unscathed after the process of migration; therefore it becomes quite difficult for you to expect cent percent data migration without any harm. Moreover, you need to select a threshold, for instance, 90% of message should be migrated initially for 90% of mailboxes and closely monitor the migration percentage. Remember, checking the outcomes closely is the key to any successful migration and this would be possible for you indeed, especially if you start with pre-migration assessment.

Provision Exchange 2010 Mailboxes

Before you start generating Active Directory items for Exchange Server 2010 mailboxes, it is important for you to know that GroupWise directory are totally different from e-Directory and hence the GroupWise resources never utilize e-Directory user objects. So, if you are looking forward to transfer user objects to e-Directory, then first you need to generate them with the use of a mechanism that is totally different from what you usually use to create standard user objects. 

Incorporate GroupWise and Exchange 2010

Also, you need to discover how synchronization between GroupWise and Exchange Server 2010 can be accomplished effectively so as to ensure that Exchange Global Address List and GroupWise Address Book imitate that same users, assets and distribution groups. You need to make use of SMTP routing so as to route mail amongst GroupWise and MS Exchange 2010 and between united GroupWise/Exchange hybrid system and the external world. Please check the message set-up and the message size restrictions. 

You can easily achieve smooth mail flow between GroupWise and Exchange 2010 in two effective ways. 

•           Exchange 2003 Connector for Novell GroupWise
•           SMTP forward domain

If you set up Exchange Server 2003 machine running the correct coexistence connectors before installing MS Exchange 2010, then you may make use of calendar free-busy lookup. 

Run a Pilot Migration

The primary aim of pilot migration is to determine the challenges that you may encounter once the complete migration process starts. The pilot migration will also help you to find out the methods to prevent such challenges and resolve them. So, it is common to face troubles and challenges throughout the pilot migration, where you will encounter envoy sample of troubles which may occur during migration. Remember, if the mailboxes for migration are in low thousands, then over 5% of total people may give a good example. Moreover, the percentage may even decrease if the migrations are bigger enough. 

Before instigating the pilot migration process, it is important for you to determine how smooth and faster the data can be transferred, simply by conducting a controlled migration of identified quantity of production GroupWise data on individual migration server. Through this process you can easily get the migration baseline which is based on throughput in GB/hour. With throughput one can easily determine the time required to transfer the total data volume.

Through pilot migration, one can easily find out how much disk space is required on the target, which may vary from the source, depending upon the edition of Novell GroupWise and also the platform on which it is running. Remember, usually the volume of data on target is always larger compared to the data on source. The sole way to determine how the data will perform after migration is to test the data. 

Migrate Data and Track Migration Progress

Once each batch of mailboxes is transferred, you need to track down the number of messages migrated, along with the total number of errors or notices and number of messages filtered or missed out per mailbox. Try to opt for effective software solution to conduct this task and the software should have separate logs for each transferred mailbox that comprises the total number of appointments and messages the mailbox encloses before migration. Also, try to enclose the number of missed out objects to number of moving objects and deduct the number of errors and then divide the outcomes by the total message count, this will help you to find out the approximate percentage. If the percentage is 98+, then you may rest assured and sign off on the mailbox as a successful achievement.

Note - If you are unable to migrate GroupWise to MS Exchange Server 2010 with the use of aforementioned tips, then you may make use of third party GroupWise to MS Exchange Server migration software. The third party migration software will help to migrate GroupWise to MS Exchange Server 2010 easily, without causing any damage or data loss throughout the migration process.