Exchange Online Migration From POP3
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Back in topic....
You don't need downtime per se. But...
You have many hours while the MX records propagate. During that time it is best to not have people using the email if you can help it.
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Uploading PSTs can be done after the core migration is done.
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Generally the main migration you want to do in a single shot. Like Friday night into Saturday.
Then once new emails are working and everyone is functional you look to migrate historic emails.
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@scottalanmiller has pretty much nailed this one.
But I suggest changing the TTL on your MX records to something extremely short a week before your migrate. This will simply let mail flow to the new destination faster.
Then setup Office 365. Get Outlook configured on all of the clients and send out an email with the information on how to connect their mobile device. Then flip the DNS and wait for mail to flow in.
Once mail is flowing in, hit each user and drag/drop their email from the PST folder to the new Office 365 folder. Outlook will then handle getting the old email sent up to Office 365.
Finally nuke the local PST files after August 31st and you have confirmed that each user is fully in sync -
@scottalanmiller said:
Can I ask what price you got?
For E1: $8.00 a person
For Just Exchange; $4.00 a person -
I haven't read every single post on the thread so forgive me if I repeat something someone says.
- Do not buy more licenses then you need right now there is no reason at all very easy to add and subtract as needed
- $5,000 to do a migration for 50 users!! Wow they are nuts. That is a MASSIVE amount of $$ for a small migration.
- SAM is right
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@scottalanmiller said:
Back in topic....
You don't need downtime per se. But...
You have many hours while the MX records propagate. During that time it is best to not have people using the email if you can help it.
I was thinking a Friday Night...going around to every workstation, setting up the new mail server info and then uploading the PST's. I'll send our mobile users home with directions on how to update their mobile devices (I am sure I'll get calls).
I was hoping I could at least set myself up on the new system and then slowly roll people to it...saw an article where people could still be on the POP3 (see original post) and on the new system but wasn't sure if that applied to my situation.
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@Minion-Queen said:
I haven't read every single post on the thread so forgive me if I repeat something someone says.
- Do not buy more licenses then you need right now there is no reason at all very easy to add and subtract as needed
- $5,000 to do a migration for 50 users!! Wow they are nuts. That is a MASSIVE amount of $$ for a small migration.
- SAM is right
Can I go ahead and get Exchange Online and purchased and mess around in the "control panel" before rolling out? I know nothing will happen until the MX records are updated but just wanted to make double sure. Would like to get in and enter users info, set up address book, etc.
Also, the reason we purchased extra licenses is we only want to pay once a year and if we add during the year, it is a payment away from the yearly mark. Office manager was totally against monthly draft on our company card.
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You can go ahead and get things setup and even use the email until your MX records are updated your email would just be something like [email protected]
Go play to your hearts contentAhh ok the extra licenses make sense though, even from the management side of things I do not understand paying for more money per year to make it a once a year bill. Save money that makes a little more sense.
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@Minion-Queen said:
You can go ahead and get things setup and even use the email until your MX records are updated your email would just be something like [email protected]
Go play to your hearts contentAhh ok the extra licenses make sense though, even from the management side of things I do not understand paying for more money per year to make it a once a year bill. Save money that makes a little more sense.
I agree but I've learned to just "go with it" on her decisions...
The problem is, though, if we find out that people may be better suited with the E1 plan and we want to move them up to it, we'll still have to pay then and there. I am checking our MX records information now and may post a question about that....you guys rock!
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@Dashrender said:
I can't see any way to do this progressively, that said, you could visit all of your users and setup their new Outlook profiles connected to Office365 and the POP3 as noted above before switching the MX records, additionally you'd need/want to connect their old PST files so the users have access to their old email until you are able to import the old PSTs into Office365.
In this scenerio, your mail would still be delivered to your POP3 account, but your Outlook client will pull down the mail and instantly send it to your Office 365 account, no longer putting new messages into the local PST.This would seem to be a pretty good way to have the users experience as little change as possible.
Here are some steps:- create all users on Exchange
a) log into the web interface for one user and make sure you can send an email from that account and it appears to be coming from your domain, if not, you need to fix this first - create DNS records for autodiscover as directed by MS (DO NOT CHANGE THE MX RECORD, yet)
- create new local Outlook profiles for everyone
a) connect users to O365
b) attach POP3 account to profile, delivery of the POP3 items needs to go to Office 365
c) Import contacts only from PST to O365 (contacts alone won't take but a min or two on average)
d) attach their PST file to that profile (they'll have two sets of inboxes, sent mail, etc, but at least they will have access to their old email)
e) TEST - Now you can change your MX record to O365's settings. You'll start receiving your new mail directly in O365
- after at least double your MX records TTL (if set to 24 hours, wait 48 hours) you can visit the client workstations and
a) remove the POP3 account from the Outlook profile
b) disconnect the PST file
c) import the contents of the PST to O365 (depending on the size and how fast your internet connection is, this might take a while)
The issue I see with these steps is that you'll probably end up with doubled contacts. You did the first contact import so that users would have access to their contacts in O365 immediately. I suppose if you deleted them all from the PST before disconnecting it in step 5b you wouldn't have any double up.
- create all users on Exchange
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@Dashrender said:
@Dashrender said:
I can't see any way to do this progressively, that said, you could visit all of your users and setup their new Outlook profiles connected to Office365 and the POP3 as noted above before switching the MX records, additionally you'd need/want to connect their old PST files so the users have access to their old email until you are able to import the old PSTs into Office365.
In this scenerio, your mail would still be delivered to your POP3 account, but your Outlook client will pull down the mail and instantly send it to your Office 365 account, no longer putting new messages into the local PST.This would seem to be a pretty good way to have the users experience as little change as possible.
Here are some steps:- create all users on Exchange
a) log into the web interface for one user and make sure you can send an email from that account and it appears to be coming from your domain, if not, you need to fix this first - create DNS records for autodiscover as directed by MS (DO NOT CHANGE THE MX RECORD, yet)
- create new local Outlook profiles for everyone
a) connect users to O365
b) attach POP3 account to profile, delivery of the POP3 items needs to go to Office 365
c) Import contacts only from PST to O365 (contacts alone won't take but a min or two on average)
d) attach their PST file to that profile (they'll have two sets of inboxes, sent mail, etc, but at least they will have access to their old email)
e) TEST - Now you can change your MX record to O365's settings. You'll start receiving your new mail directly in O365
- after at least double your MX records TTL (if set to 24 hours, wait 48 hours) you can visit the client workstations and
a) remove the POP3 account from the Outlook profile
b) disconnect the PST file
c) import the contents of the PST to O365 (depending on the size and how fast your internet connection is, this might take a while)
The issue I see with these steps is that you'll probably end up with doubled contacts. You did the first contact import so that users would have access to their contacts in O365 immediately. I suppose if you deleted them all from the PST before disconnecting it in step 5b you wouldn't have any double up.
Good Stuff here...thanks...about to complete our signup...
- create all users on Exchange
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@Dashrender outlook is smarter than that. The standard import process in outlook has an option to ignore or overwrite duplicates.
Your steps are fairly good, I would do it a bit different, but isn't that how it always works?
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aww.. I haven't done an import in a while, I forgot that it has the option to ignore dups. Thanks.
What would your steps be? Knowledge is power
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@Dashrender said:.
What would your steps be? Knowledge is power
Unlike @scottalanmiller I don't type reams on my tablet. I'll try and reply from my PC on this later.
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If you change your MX records last thing on a Friday, how much e-mail is likely to go to the old POP3 server during the weekend? It wouldn't be much at our place, so I'd pickup the stray e-mail myself using a POP3 client and then forward the e-mail to the users, assuming you know their passwords.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
assuming you know their passwords.
Are you saying you know the passwords of all of your users?
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I'm not sure how the OP's POP3 system is configured. When we were using a POP3 server it didn't integrate with AD, so I knew everyone's POP3 passwords.
Even when I migrated to Exchange, I wrote down most users AD passwords so that I could logon as them and create new profiles in Outlook. This may have been a dumb move, but I didn't know how to create Outlook profiles for a user without logging on as that user and I still don't! So if I the OP doesn't know any user passwords, I don't know how he'll create new Outlook profiles on a Friday night. I'd be interested to know how I should have done it.
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1) Change the TTL for your existing MX records to 1 hour 2) Setup Office 365 and create the users a) As part of tyhe setup you need to create DNS records for autodiscover as directed by MS (DO NOT CHANGE THE MX RECORD, yet) b) Log into the web interface for one user and make sure you can send an email from that account and it appears to be coming from your domain, if not, you need to fix this first 3) Using the existing Outlook profile add the new O365 Exchange account. a) Test that the account can receive mail via the .onmicrosoft.com email address. b) The send address should show your primary domain at this point which means replies would go to the POP service still. 4) Send out instructions to mobile users with how to create the new account on their devices. 5) Now you can change your MX record to Office 365's settings. a) You'll start receiving mail within a few hours to the Exchange account in Outlook 6) After a couple days (again, assuming short TTL) visit each workstation and a) Set the Exchange account as default b) Remove the POP3 account from the Outlook profile c) Disconnect the PST file d) Import the contents of the PST to Outlook i) This should not take a very long time to get the data into the OST, but full sync with Office 365 will vary dependingo n size and internet bandwidth -
@Carnival-Boy said:
I don't know how he'll create new Outlook profiles on a Friday night. I'd be interested to know how I should have done it.
Spin the passwords.
