Exchange Online Migration From POP3

garak0410

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.

garak0410

@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.

Minion Queen

@garak0410

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 content

Ahh 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.

garak0410

@Minion-Queen said:

@garak0410

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 content

Ahh 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!

Dashrender

@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.

garak0410

@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...

JaredBusch

@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?

Dashrender

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

JaredBusch

@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.

Carnival Boy

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.

Dashrender

@Carnival-Boy said:

assuming you know their passwords.

Are you saying you know the passwords of all of your users?

Carnival Boy

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.

JaredBusch

@Dashrender

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

JaredBusch

@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.

Carnival Boy

You mean reset them to something and logon using that new password? Yeah, I could have done, but I'm not sure what benefit that would have. I'm still logging on as them with all the security concerns that that implies.

garak0410

Very good info guys and as Scott says, good "knowledge base" info.

Let me digress for a second...because I may end up needing help here...

Our domain name is registered with Network Solutions and is currently pointed to our POP3 provider who also hosts our webpage. The webpage actually has a pointer to our WIX page, which we have set in the POP3 providers control panel. So when the POP3 provider shuts down all of our services, do I simply point the domain to the Wix page or will this be a little more complicated with the MX records and such? Thanks...

Dashrender

Sounds like you need to migrate your entire DNS to someone new since you're leaving the POP3 service.

@scottalanmiller mentioned some provider a week or so ago that offers free DNS and free mild website cacheing services (they offer a paid service that really 'protects and speeds up' your website). Maybe he'll remind us by posting

You'll need to create all of the current records you have on the POP3's DNS server on the new DNS providers servers. once you create all of these records, go to Network Solutions and point your SOA to the new DNS provider.

As for making sure people are able to make it to your website, you'll need to change your www records and any others that have to do with your website to your WIX IP address (hopefully they are doing header reading and attach the traffic to the correct website - that is assuming you have a shared IP at your hosting company, WIX)

Dashrender

@JaredBusch a few minor changes.

Why do you like leaving the old Outlook profile in place instead of creating a new one? Also, why keep delivering messages that are coming in from POP3 to the PST until you kill it? Trying to understand the thought process.

garak0410

@Dashrender said:

Sounds like you need to migrate your entire DNS to someone new since you're leaving the POP3 service.

At the domain owner website (Network Solutions), I have our 4 domain names we own listed (we only really use one.)...I can go into MANAGE and I have three options with one being domain name server (DNS) and another being Advanced DNS services...under advanced, it says

Warning, Service Interruption Will Occur!
In order to use Advanced DNS Manager, your Name Servers must be moved to Network Solutions managed name servers.
Please Note: When you Move Name Servers to Network Solutions, your Existing Name Servers will no longer be used. As a result, Web sites and E-mail from other providers will be lost.

So, this is where I need to go when you said above, correct?

Dashrender

You can go there if you want to use Network Solutions as your DNS provider.