Each year companies allocate budgets for upgrades and new equipment. As part of that budgeting process is the consideration of new servers and sometimes specifically email servers. If you’re one of the companies who have allocated budget for an email server upgrade then you’re also going to have to factor in the costs of migration.

There are many migration options and tools available in the marketplace to help ease the migration from like-to-like email servers and from unlike-to-unlike email servers. This article will discuss the features and considerations to look for when considering which email migration tools to choose.

1. Conversion options should include email systems such as: Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, Lotus Notes, Novel GroupWise, Netscape, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Eudora, AOL, POP, IMAP and others.If your source or target destination email system is not supported by a particular migration tool vendor then it is best to continue your migration tool search until you find your email system on a list of email systems supported by a migration software vendor. You might be tempted to contact an email migration tools vendor to check on any upcoming support but it is best not to be the first customer of a version 1.0 product as bugs are still being worked out of any new release of software particularly the first release.
2. Conversion options should include email data such as: messages and folders, attachments, address books, calendars and tasks.There are many conversion tools available. Some tools are free but most are products which must be purchased. The different formats that are supported include: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, HTML and many others. Other email address books and scheduling applications provided by well known Internet Service Providers, web browser and operating system vendors are also supported such as from: AOL, CompuServe, Netscape, Hotmail, Microsoft Windows and many others.You’ll want to verify with the migration tool vendor that your email address books and scheduling applications are supported as both target and source databases.And if you’re using earlier versions of Microsoft Outlook you’ll be able to export the address books as CSV (comma separated values) text files. Most commercial applications support the ability to import information from external programs. Check with your vendor first to confirm this feature is available for all versions that will be involved in your migration process.
   Continue reading 6 Features to Look for in Email Migration Tools

When you are transitioning from a legacy Exchange version to either Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 you will come to a stage in the project at which you need to plan for the migration of mailboxes to the new servers.

In small to medium size businesses the considerations are fewer than for larger enterprises, but they do share several in common.  Generally speaking you should plan for the following items.

End user interruption – when a mailbox is moved the end user will be disconnected from it.  Older versions of Outlook do not handle this very well, but even newer versions will need the end user to restart the application to connect to their new mailbox.

This means that it is often best to schedule migrations to occur outside of normal business hours.  Evenings and weekends are very common for this.  If a business operates 24 hours a day using rotating shifts then you can schedule migrations to occur so that a given user is moved when they are not rostered on duty.

Transaction Logging – a mailbox migration means that on the target server (the new server) a whole bunch of new data is being written into the databases.  This creates a very large amount of transaction logging, often much larger than what a normal day’s email traffic would generate.

There are a few ways to manage this.  Moving mailboxes in smaller batches keeps logging to a minimum but means migrations will take longer.  Provisioning large amounts of disk space on the logging volume means bigger batches can be migrated, but after the migration is finished it can mean wasted disk space that is not needed for day to day logging levels. Continue reading Planning Considerations for Exchange Mailbox Migrations

In any large organization there will come a time when the IT department will have to migrate their existing users to a new mail server. Lots of times this migration is a result of two companies merging their IT operations together. Other times the migration is driven by a company’s decision to standardize on one platform so as to simplify administration and reduce maintenance costs.

The migration can be made less painful for users if careful planning is performed during the initial stages. Many tools exist to convert mail folders from one format to another. For example, there are tools to convert from Outlook/Exchange mailbox and personal folders (.pst files) to the Domino server mailbox or local .nsf files

Or in the case of going from an existing IMAP server to Google Apps there are tools that help domain administrators transfer the contents of users mailboxes without risking the loss of existing mail. Of course having a recent backup is most important to insure against the loss of email. In addition, you want to verify that the migration tool you use will keep and/or display a log of each mail message migrated including the sender, receiver and date of the migrated email message.

Folder structures should also be preserved so that users can stay as productive as possible after email migrations. You don’t want users having to spend their time recreating the email folders they use for staying organized nor having to repopulate their email folders from backup. You want to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Continue reading Email Migration Management

Migrating from one email system to Exchange is not an easy task but with proper planning it can be done.  No matter what system you had used previously, the following are some of the aspects that many have to deal with and make a decision about.  The first is the cost.  IT managers have to ask themselves about what the cost will  be for licensing, hardware, etc.  It is one of the most difficult decisions to make.  Many IT directors believe that implementing a new system will take most of their budget.  Before making such decision, look at your current environment.  Since this is almost like implementing a new email system, this is an opportunity to include an archiving plan in the early stages. Developing an archiving plan considers having key players and departments involved.  With senior management included, get buy in from human resources and legal to provide their procedures for handling legal inquiries for email files and document attachments.

Continue reading How to plan your migration to Exchange 2007