Exchange Migration Success

PRIASOFT SOLUTIONS

Outline Introduction Success Process Tools Q&A (~30 mins)

Introduction Priasoft founded in 1999 – over 12 years

ago! Founded by Exchange and Enterprise

experts, many of whom are still employed

Exchange-Only solutions = Exchange Experts

Architecture and Design done in-house

Key Principles Simple Safe Seamless Scalable Supportable

Mindset for Success - Criteria

All parts are working properly and as designed

New environment is manageable and stable

New environment has been scoped appropriately

Key and Core systems are designed to work with the new environment

Business Leaders can publicly claim success

No risks. If any do exist, must be identified early.

End users are able to perform all line-of-business tasks the same or better than prior to migration

“Outside world” does not experience a difference

Technical Criteria (Truth)Business Criteria (Perception)

Mindset for Success

Ownership: technical team Impacts quality of result Easier to discover Quantifiable Solved by using technology Less likely to cause time-

slips

Ownership: business leaders Impacts scheduling and

process design Impacts costs and revenue Involves people, not

technology Solved by executive decision

and/or change in process

Technical Issues Business Issues

Success Process

Discovery Plan Prepare Test Rectify Tune Schedule Migrate Success

Discovery

In order to plan for a migration, you have to Discover what should be included.The Discovery process should be used to identify both the obvious participants as well as the non-obvious.Not all influencers can be discovered immediately. Often key influencers (people, processes, or applications) are discovered later in the Success Process.

Discovery

Plan

Development of the migration Plan ultimately determines the success of the migration.The quality of the Plan is affected by the variables found during Discovery. Any variables not found can also effect the Plan.Changes to the Plan should be expected. Other parts of the Success Process will likely influence the specifics of the Plan. With over 12 years of experience in migrations we can be there to help with the Plan development.

Plan

Prepare

Prepare involves setup of migration servers and appropriate permissions, communication to end users, pre-staging of the target environment, etc.Categorization of users, mailboxes, contacts, and DLs is an IMPORTANT part of prepare.This step is also used to begin answering questions and fulfilling tasks that were identified in Discovery.

Prepare

Test

Testing and Dry-Run involves a few types of tests: Function Fidelity Metrics Duration Performance

Test

Rectify

This step is used to handle issues discovered during the Test step.It is not uncommon to have a few failures during Test. You may need to change things in the environment or have users make changes.Rectify is an important step that helps guarantee final success.

Rectify

Tune

Tune is used to make final changes to the Plan in response to discoveries made during Test and Rectify.This may involve one or more of the following: Increasing concurrency Adding more migration servers Adjusting user list “batches” Adjusting environmental configurations Improving communication to end users Other factors that are found to impact the success of the Plan

Tune

Schedule

Schedule involves determining when the production migration occurs.Only schedule users that have completed a Dry-Run successfully.Your revised Plan will help determine the best time to Schedule.It is important that the migration team “owns” the schedule.

Schedule

Migrate

This is the production migration based on the revised Plan.You shouldn’t reach this step until all mailboxes have completed a Dry-Run without issue.The migration, by this point, should be fully understood with regards to duration and expected outcome.This is likely to the be most boring step of the entire process.

Migrate

Success

At this step, the migration is complete.Evaluate success criteria.There are likely to be follow on tasks that are dependent upon this step.

Success

Tools

Priasoft Core Components

Priasoft has coverage for nearly all of the features of Microsoft Exchange that users find important.

Outlook Profile Updater Updates Outlook Clients

Mailbox Migration Manger Migrates “batches” of mailboxes

Public Folder Migration Manager Migrates Selected Public Folders

Priasoft Collaboration Suite Migrates Contacts and Distribution Lists Can synchronize changes

Optional Additional Components

Priasoft has coverage for nearly all of the features of Microsoft Exchange that users find important.

Microsoft InterOrg PF Replication Tool Common for Free/Busy sync Not necessary unless co-existing

MS Availability Service (Ex2010+) Also provides some Free/Busy features

Scripting tools and editors Good tools will provide opportunity to

run scripts to extend automation

Common 3rd Party Tools

Many times there are services that integrate with exchange, like archiving, for which tools must be evaluated in order to measure up to the success criteria

MS ADMT (Active Director Migration Tool) Used to migrate passwords, SID history, and workstation profiles

Email Archiving tools May need to “de-archive” or to migrate an archive

MDM (mobile device management) tools Can help with mobile devices for reprovisioning

Non-exchange migration tools There are 3rd party tools for paths like Notes-to-Exchange and

Google-to-Exchange. Post-migration automation tools

Many customers are moving to a RESOURCE FOREST model where email is separated as an independent service architecture. Such can be cumbersome in large environments to manage post migration.

Priasoft Specific Technical Highlights

Only Microsoft supported technologies/APIs are used Mailbox migration is highly efficient by connecting to

source AND target mailbox simultaneously Data copies from source mailbox to target through

migration server’s network interface No “double copy” of data and no data is “left behind”

which means no security risks. Source mailbox is not modified nor deleted – built in

safety net. Profile updates are done for ALL Outlook profiles, not

just the default profile

Priasoft Specific Technical Highlights

No additional infrastructure: no SQL, no Agents, no AD Schema changes, no secondary LDAP servers.

Nothing “left behind”: once migration completes, the only thing to “clean up” is to repurpose or power-off the Migration Servers.

All code is owned by Priasoft. None is outsourced. Priasoft is NOT automating the Microsoft move

mailbox tool – our process is our own which means better support, flexibility, and performance.

Migration Workshop (Optional) Priasoft, at request, conducts a 4 day Migration Workshop that

focuses on the details of the migration Plan development. The workshop helps identify obscure and often missed topics

during Discovery – both technical AND business. The workshop is done on-site in order to interact with local

resources and environments The workshop is NOT “product training”, but is migration

philosophy, paradigm, and design specific to the environment. Tools are discussed, but from a direction of “when” and “where”

to use them in the Plan.

Selected questions to be answered.

Q&A

Please provide feedback on this session at the following linked in group:“Microsoft Exchange Migration”