Email Migration suggestions/advice

[gjefferies]

Hi,

 

I work at a sixth form college and we are running Novell GroupWise for both our staff and student email.

We are looking to deploy Microsoft Exchange on-prem next year for staff, but my question is what should we do with student emails?

 

We have around 250 Staff and 1800 Students,

 

I was thinking of migrating the student email to Office 365, but this has not been plain sailing for other schools and colleges.

 

So should I just bring up a couple more servers and move the student email to exchange too.

 

Any advice/experiences of Office 365 welcome.

 

Thanks

 

Gareth

[Dos_Box]

Moving to Enterprise Software forum.

[Dos_Box]

I see that even Microsoft have a page for this: Download How To Successfully Migrate From Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange from Official Microsoft Download Centre but it involves purchasing third party software.

What email clients are you currently using? Given the (relatively) small install base of Groupwise vs other mail systems I'd hazard a guess that real world migration advice is going to be thin on the ground.

All of the tool I've found so far involve using a paid-for solution, and many simply export mail boxes to .PST files which you can do manually if you have Outlook anyway.

Please let us know how you get on as it sounds like an interesting (if painful) project.

[gjefferies]

Hi,

 

I'm not really asking how to do it, but experiences of using on-prem Exchange versus office 365 for student email.

 

Thanks

Gareth

[Boredguy]

We are using 365 for all our users and for the students we are only pointing them to the OWA which so far has been fine (in fact it's more reliable than Outlook 2013 but that's another matter) Admittedly our student numbers are less than 1000, but even with the scaling up to 2500 it shouldn't be an issue. There is DirSync to create your user accounts to begin with and powershell scripts that can activate the licensing on a regular basis for any newly created accounts.

 

Surely if your current mail solution supports IMAP connection then exporting your mails in batches should not be an issue up to the cloud.

[gjefferies]

Thanks for your reply,

 

Yes I am not overly worried about get old emails into Office 365, but more around reliability of it... as I heard if your internet connection is down it will stop logins from home etc?

 

Thanks

 

Gareth

[Boredguy]

If you go for the DirSync option, then that is not an issue as it copies the network password into azure, but you do have to enter your whole e-mail address instead of just your username, which is a small price to pay.

[sukh]

you can login from anywhere as long as you have a Internet connection. if school network is down then you can still login.

 

unless you have ha for exch then you're better off with o365. in fact why would you want additional costs for email on prem.

[gjefferies]

Hi Sukh

Its getting our SLT to buy into the whole cloud thing, which is proving difficult - moving student email into the cloud would be a big step.

 

Cheers

Gareth

[zag]

There is no reason to run onsite Exchange in this day and age.

 

Just roll it out to all students and staff and save yourself a whole lot of hassle.

 

Thats what we do and it has never had any reliability problems in 2 years of running it. There are no problems logging in unless you use more advanced solutions like single sign on. We didn't bother with that and have a 100% reliable system. Much more than our old Physical Exchange Server, and thats the best measure of success

[sonofsanta]

As someone who runs on-site Exchange, I feel qualified to say that you should not believe that "on-site" means "reliable". Exchange is a strange and funny beast and will intermittently decide that settings it has used for three years are no longer good enough.

 

Office 365 is next on my hit list, after writing my DR procedure up. I need rid of that email server before April anyway.

[sukh]

Hi Sukh

Its getting our SLT to buy into the whole cloud thing, which is proving difficult - moving student email into the cloud would be a big step.

 

Cheers

Gareth

 

What exactly are their concerns?

[gjefferies]

Hi,

 

1.Privacy of data, this is addressed somewhat if we use the Janet agreement as data is stored in EU.

2. Waiting for Microsoft to resolve "issues" we may have.

3. Its new and college hasn't done anything like this before...

 

Cheers

Gareth

[sukh]

Hi,

 

1.Privacy of data, this is addressed somewhat if we use the Janet agreement as data is stored in EU.

2. Waiting for Microsoft to resolve "issues" we may have.

3. Its new and college hasn't done anything like this before...

 

Cheers

Gareth

 

1. Have you read the privacy data for O365 and how serious this is taken? Some people just hear things and repeat things. If you query and ask what exactly are the concerns around privacy? And what concerns they have for O365 privacy?

2. What issues? Related to email or issues around other MSFT products? I wouldn't combine other issues with O365.

3. Once upon the time, the college didn't have email, nothing wrong with trying something new. To be honest, it's not like O365 is new and they are a Beta customer. There's millions of customer on O365.

 

From what they have told you, I don't see any reason, just excuses or someone who clearly doesn't know what they're talking about.