Google apps migration from exchange

[atamakosi]

I'm trying to sort out a migration of our exchange server over to google apps for education and I'm unsure how to proceed.

 

Currently, I've had Google Apps setup for our school for years but not many have bothered to take it up. This year, due to our Exchange servers age and low disk space, I'm going to migrate it over but not sure how this will affect the end user. I've configured the Google Apps directory sync for all my users so that is sussed. Google Apps password sync is still a bit of a problem due to a network error when connecting for authorization but I think that will be cleared up when we switch off our ISA in favor of a UTM in a couple weeks. So it comes down to Exchange now.

 

I've tried doing a mail migration with the tool provided by google but it always fails when trying to verify the .csv of users to migrate. I'm guessing I am missing some information about what is acceptable and what isn't. Would anyone have a better example or more knowledge of the parameters/fields? As far as I know it should just have [email protected], no first name or surname etc. so it would look like this:

 

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

 

And once that is done, how has everyone converted their email clients to Apps from Exchange? I'm not sure if there is a GPO I can use to redirect the Outlook clients to google's servers or if I need to use the migration tool (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/outlookmigration) on each machine/account. (Btw, the tool doesn't cover Office 2013 yet which was what I was going to upgrade to since I was having to do all this work anyway. Having second thoughts about it now and may just upgrade to office 2010.)

 

Any help/suggestions are appreciated.

[antmanvolpe]

We did a complete migration of our facility (staff and students) this past summer using the Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange utility. We configured csv files in small batches to be run consecutively during the migration process (we would queue them up one by one). I remember fighting with the utility to authenticate against both Google and the AD before the utility would run correctly, so you may one to check to ensure that the user credentials you are specifying for the Exchange server has Admin read privileges (if memory serves).

 

Assuming that you are migrating from the same domain ([email protected] on exchange will be [email protected] on google) you should only need a single column in the csv with the username (without the @ domain) one per line.

 

Good luck!

[atamakosi]

Thanks for the info, antmanvolpe. I've removed the @domain.com from the csv but I'm still encountering an error during this part of the migration tool. I now just have:

username1

username2

username3

 

and these should correspond directly to the users already loaded to Google apps. (I exported this list from our current mailboxes in exchange so i didn't miss anyone. but i've also tried a smaller group exported from Active directory.)

 

does your school user an email client to access their new google apps hosted email? if so, how did you set those up?

[atamakosi]

also, does the csv not need an identifying name for the single column? aka username?

[antmanvolpe]

My school accesses Google from the browser only aside from the occasional cell phone. I went and looked back at the csv files that I used during the migration and according to my notes so long as they are the same user you only need on column. I did have a couple of instances where I changed the users email address from exchange to google and as such it required to columns the first being the exchange account and the later being the google account.

 

Did you check to ensure that the user you are accessing exchange with is an Admin with read priviliges to the all user accounts? Have you checked the log file to see if there is a more specific error?

[atamakosi]

i've wrestled with this some more and finally discovered the issue. I kept attempting to use the tool from my Exchange server when it needs a machine with Outlook installed. I didn't catch that until I thought about trying it from my KMS server to see if it was an issue with the machine. (Exchange has been having issues hence the reason for migration)

 

I feel like that was a bit odd to require Outlook when you can go straight from Exchange but there we are. Accounts are uploading. However, it doesn't appear folders are being moved across. From the Admin document I read for Google Apps it should sort folders and sub-folders into labels. The account I check just shows all emails dumped into 'All Mail'. Any ideas?

[antmanvolpe]

Running the utility from the exchange service is a no no, glad to see you worked that out. I did not have any issues with folders being transferred. I did not need Outlook installed as we did not use it at all. Are you using the outlook migration tool or the exchange migration tool?

[atamakosi]

Im running the exchange migration tool from my KMS host. The plan is to install the google apps for outlook msi to staff laptops and workstations to allow for syncing data after i've transferred our bulk emails, contacts, calendars.

 

I've been testing with my own account and found the email folders only transfer with the @domain.com added to the username. And it failed when it came across an attachment of 7mb. Supposedly the tool will transfer attachments up to 25mb. So there are a few inconsistencies and I'll probably have to migrate users a few at a time to keep an eye on what fails.

[atamakosi]

welp...turns out a huge cause of my problems is that my KMS host I was using had a -10 minute time deficit. once corrected the time closer to reality, it went amazingly smooth on my test. uploading all my users now

[antmanvolpe]

Glad to hear you sorted it out.