Six Steps to a Successful Migration to Exchange Step 1: Migration Project Assessment, Planning and Design

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1 Six Steps to a Successful Migration to Exchange 2013

2 Six Steps to a Successful Migration to Exchange 2013 Migrating your organization s to Exchange 2013, whether it be on premises or in the cloud with Office 365, is a large undertaking it requires extensive planning and preparation. Knowing the right steps and having a detailed project plan are key to ensuring a successful migration. Using Netmail Archive, Netmail s enterprise-class messaging archiving solution, Six Steps to a Successful Migration to Exchange 2013 provides important information and recommendations to help you better understand the migration process and ensure a successful migration. With our SAFE Migration (Simple, Accelerated, Fault-Tolerant Exchange Migration) approach, we have safely and successfully migrated thousands of users. As such, our experience with migration projects has helped us narrow down the six most crucial steps you need to include in your migration project to ensure success: Step 1: Migration Project Assessment, Planning and Design Step 2: Archiving Data in Your Existing System Step 3: User Provisioning and Client Deployment Step 4: Data Injection Step 5: Cut Over to Exchange 2013 Step 6: Completing Post-Migration Tasks Step 1: Migration Project Assessment, Planning and Design Project Assessment You cannot begin your migration project without having a clear and realistic picture of what the project actually entails. You need to know what resources you already have, what resources you will need, and how much time it will take to complete the project. Keep these points in mind: Teamwork: Having a well-rounded team will bring much more insight into the overall migration project. Create a team with members from various backgrounds of expertise to ensure that no steps or issues are overlooked, and select a project manager who will help lead your team throughout the project. Discovery: A migration project team meeting will allow you to discuss the project in detail and to outline what resource assessments need to be made. For example, conducting a discovery of your existing messaging system and network can help you establish exactly how many servers, domains, post offices or mail stores, users and mailboxes exist, how much data is stored within those mailboxes, how much data is archived, how much storage is used or available, what is contained within the network, etc. Infrastructure: By examining and understanding your infrastructure, you can determine what, if any, additional system requirements are needed in order to proceed with the migration. Subsequently, you will be able to better estimate your project duration. 2

3 Overall Project Plan Once you have completed your project assessment, you need to plan out your overall migration project. When drawing up your plan, you need to answer the following questions: What are your business requirements? (Disaster Recovery, Compliance, etc.) What are your storage requirements? How much data do you need to retain? How much data do you want to inject into the Exchange 2013 system? What data do you need to migrate (mail, appointments, address books, etc.)? When do you want to migrate users (certain times, days, weeks, months)? Can you afford any downtime? Are you compliant? Do you need to review old and/or establish new retention policies? Could your organization use an archiving solution once the migration is complete? Exchange System Design You also need to plan your new Exchange system, including messaging routing design, messaging access design, and messaging storage design. Using the information gathered from your resource assessments, you will be able to plan out your new infrastructure and acquire the appropriate software, hardware, and/or tools, as required. From there, you can work on finalizing your overall implementation plan how and when you will implement your archiving and migration solutions and new platform. Moreover, you can proceed with defining your migration methodology, including describing procedures, alternative options, and/or possible troubleshooting techniques. Communication Plan It is important that a comprehensive communication plan is created in order to keep all users affected by the migration, including Executive Management, the project team, and users, up to date with the progress of the project. This communication plan should include the following information for users: An outline of the migration plan, including how and when it will be carried out Any issues that the organization may encounter during the migration process Migration status updates via throughout the migration process Any pre-migration and/or post-migration tasks that users may have to complete 3

4 Did you know? retention and epolicy are no longer simply IT issues but also very much business issues. To help mitigate risk and manage your for compliance, schedule dates and attendees for a corporate epolicy workshop. Be sure to include members of your IT, HR, legal, and operations teams. The purpose of this workshop is to show these key stakeholders the importance and benefits of acceptable usage policies and to teach them how to create new or manage existing policies. Netmail s policy retention and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) workshop has helped many organizations take the guesswork out of what needs to be retained and for how long, saving them time and money. This workshop should ideally be held before the migration process begins so that administrators have the time and opportunity to prepare acceptable usage policies appropriate to their organization. Step 2: Archiving Data in Your Existing System You need to prepare your existing messaging system for data extraction and archiving. To do so, ensure that you install the necessary hardware, your archiving solution, and any other necessary components on your current messaging system. Netmail Archive can archive your current messaging system s data and import your personal archives. More importantly, its policy-driven administration can provide your organization with the granularity it needs to apply an infinite number of unique archiving policies to selected users or groups of users within your system. Archiving before migrating eliminates the transfer of unnecessary data onto the new Exchange system. There is no need for messages which are not accessed frequently (or ever) to reside on the live messaging system and take up space on expensive storage. Archiving your data allows you to free up that storage space and reduce server bloat. For example, if you have 1TB of data stored on your existing messaging system and inject it directly into the Exchange system, the server may bloat up to 2-3TB in size because single-instance storage (SIS) is not supported in Exchange 2013 and data is replicated in Exchange However, if you first archive that data, you will be able to inject only a fraction of it (0-150GB) into the live Exchange system. Furthermore, injecting a smaller amount of data into the Exchange system rather than all of it reduces the risk of messages being lost and/or files getting corrupted during the data transfer. Archiving and ediscovery Archiving your data in XML format makes it possible for you to easily respond to ediscovery requests. With Netmail Search, an advanced web-based ediscovery tool that integrates with Netmail Archive, authorized users can intelligently search through and manage archived electronic records in a timely and cost-effective manner in support of litigation, legal discovery, or internal investigation. As an in-house ediscovery tool, Netmail Search can help your organization save time and outsourcing costs and help simplify and accelerate the review process with collaborative case management. 4

5 Step 3: User Provisioning and Client Deployment User Provisioning Before data can be migrated to the Exchange 2013 system, you need to first provision your users in Active Directory and mail-enable them for the new platform. This will allow users to access their existing mail, future and recurring appointments, tasks, notes, calendars, and personal address books once they have been moved to the new system. If desired, system administrators can also migrate the system address book, distribution lists, proxy rights, and more. One of Netmail Archive s major benefits is its usefulness as a full archiving solution once the migration is complete. Its Provisioning Utility can provision users and migrate the features you need and want to your Exchange system. Unlike with other migration solutions, you pay for an entire migration and archiving solution rather than just for a throwaway migration tool that cannot implement and enforce policies before, during, and after the migration. SAFE Migration Simple, Accelerated, Fault-Tolerant Exchange Migration Netmail Archive s unique SAFE Migration approach is based on the concept of archiving data and completing most of the data transfer before the migration of users takes place. This results in minimal disruption for the users themselves. Most other migration solutions simply transfer all of the data directly to the new Exchange system without archiving it first. Not only does this approach cause server bloat and increase the chances of lost or corrupt data, but it also takes much longer to migrate the data and therefore relies heavily on the co-existence of the two messaging systems. Many organizations try to avoid the unnecessary complexity co-existence can bring to a migration project, including having to deal with problems with directory, mail flow, routing, and calendar free/busy synchronization between the two systems. Also, it would be very difficult for organizations to remain compliant and respond to ediscovery requests should an issue arise. Client Deployment Prepare your Exchange system by installing the necessary hardware and software, a new Netmail Archive connector to Exchange, and Outlook WebApp and/or an Outlook Add-In on the system. Validate the system and server buildout, and perform capacity and client tests. Ensure that your IT staff is equipped with adequate Exchange system training so that they will be able to address troubleshooting issues and future user problems and/or questions. Once the system and its components are in place, validate the data injection process and client access. When you are confident that any and all issues that may have come up during the testing and validation phases have been resolved, you can sign off on your Exchange system setup and migration procedure. Before going live with your Exchange 2013 system, you will need to deploy the Outlook client on users workstations. For large organizations, it may be more practical to use a third-party tool (such as Novell ZENworks or Microsoft System Center Configuration 5

6 Manager) to automatically push the client onto all workstations rather than to manually deploy it on each individual workstation. Step 4: Data Injection After all Exchange accounts have been created and mail enabled, archived data can be injected into the live Exchange 2013 system. The amount of data to be injected into Exchange depends on your retention policy. For example, if your organization requires that 90 days worth of resides in the live Exchange mailbox, then only that amount of data will be injected into the system. Mail older than 90 days will remain in the archive; however, users will still be able to access their archived items. Be sure to monitor the injection process and validate and test client access as user data is moved over to the new system. Step 5: Cut Over to Exchange 2013 Before making the final cut over to Exchange, you need to perform a final collection of messages from your existing messaging system (from the last two weeks, for example), inject that data into Exchange, and carry out a final validation of your Exchange system. When you are confident that all Exchange system components are functioning correctly, you can then make the decision to go live with your new Exchange platform. You will need to redirect internal processes to Exchange and route all Internet mail to Exchange. Generally, the collection of data from your existing messaging system, the injection of that data into Exchange, and the go live decision are done over the weekend prior to the official launch of the Exchange system. By doing so, come Monday morning, users can begin using their Exchange client without experiencing downtime or interruptions during work hours. Essentially, taking the SAFE TM Migration approach ensures uncomplicated and uninterrupted access for users. Step 6: Completing Post-Migration Tasks After users and mailboxes have been migrated to Exchange 2013, there remain a few tasks that need to be completed to finalize your migration project. During the week following the migration, monitor your Exchange system and run through validation procedures to make sure that everything, including mail flow, appointment and task scheduling, etc., is working properly for all accounts. As well, ensure that your organization remains compliant by setting up the appropriate archiving jobs against your Exchange 2013 system. Take the time to test and validate that your archiving solution is implementing your archiving policies correctly. Training A period of adjustment and training is required for all those affected by the platform migration. Ensure that adequate training is provided for the system administrator(s) so that they are comfortable using the new Exchange system and archiving solution. You should also provide training for your IT and support staff so that they can effectively respond to and resolve user issues. Of course, you need to provide all users with access to training 6

7 web sites and/or documents, webinars, blogs, and any other support material that will help them transition quickly and easily to their new client. Furthermore, if your organization is ever faced with an ediscovery request, you need to make sure that your CIO, legal council, operations team, and human resources department get sufficient training to be able to find any and all information relevant to the case at hand. Clean Up When you are satisfied that the server mailboxes of your original messaging system have been successfully migrated, you can delete them and decommission your original servers. You can also remove your original messaging system s old client files and registry settings, and clean up the old clients on users desktops. About Netmail 100% employee owned, Messaging Architects is a global market leader of Integrated Management solutions and services. For over 10 years, our award-winning Netmail platform has helped hundreds of organizations worldwide eliminate complexity, ensure compliance and enhance productivity. To learn more about lowering your operating costs by intelligently mitigating risks, please visit our website at 7