Moving exchange 2003 to google apps

[Sheridan]

Has anyone gone through the process of moving their exchange 2003 mailboxes to google apps (in this case through a vle, realsmart)?

 

If so I'm interested in any comments on how this went as I'm going to have to do this in a couple of weeks and I haven't seen how to do some things (import global distribution groups etc)

 

With about 50gb of data to transfer as well I'm thinking this will take a long time, even with a dedicated 100mb link!

[meastaugh1]

The use of RealSmart for account provisioning and SSO shouldn't affect use of the GAMME tool. It works fairly reliably, though you should note the 1 message per second per user max transfer rate. The tool will allow you to process multiple users at once (25 by default), though you can increase this, and/or run GAMME on multiple computers and process them in separate batches.

 

The admin guide had a helpful table that indicates what data the tool will ams won't handle. When we were using RealSmart, I recreated the domain groups in RealSmart and had them sync across, or created them directly in Google.

[Sheridan]

Its only really a dozen or so groups we will need (i.e Heads of years, year group tutors etc)

 

I'm planning a 24 hour transfer window for the mailbox copy - with a few test ones first!

[meastaugh1]

24 hours is pretty optimistic. Some of our accounts took days to transfer. Thankfully it does transfer newest data first, so it should just be historical data that isn't there straight away.

[Sheridan]

I suppose once the users are using the new gmail accounts, they can wait for their old mail to arrive. From what I've seen you can move the old mailboxs whilst they're using the new one?

 

I've just have to remove their access to the exchange server so they can't use the wrong system

[meastaugh1]

Yes, that will work.

[rdk]

When we moved to Google Apps we left all old email on the old system and told staff they would be able to access the old system for 18 months. All new email went to the new account but we didn't transfer any old email. The acceptance of that was quite high, and I think many were happy they started with a clean account. Those who wanted things especially we helped, but basically said if you have lots of email with attachments saved then download and save the files.

[Sheridan]

Good idea. Some uses will need to keep emails but I bet a few might have a clearout

[Sheridan]

Urgh, I'm about to give up with this gamme tool anyway. Its so flakey. If I enter a test user in the csv file it fails telling me the admin user in incorrect! If I put an admin user in the csv it validates but fails telling me the consumer secret is incorrect. After 2 days of trying I haven't done a test migration of anything.

 

Looks like our google migration is going to painful and unreliable after all. I wish smt had stuck with onsite exchange like I wanted!

[meastaugh1]

What's the format of your csv? Are the e-mail addresses of Exchange and Google the same or different?

 

I vaguely recall getting the oauth message a couple of times, but it's been a while since I ran it. I think my issue may have been related to an error in the CSV. Is there anything in the error details when you click the help link next to the oauth error?

 

Edit: When prompted for an exchange user, are you specifying a domain admin?

Edited April 15, 2014 by meastaugh1

[Sheridan]

exchangeusername, googleusername is the format - it seems happy with that!

 

All the tests are ok, apart from the oauth secret, which I've reset/changed a few times now.

[ShorehamGeek]

Hi Sheridan

I've done what you're doing, but I set up a sync between AD and Google Apps. The advantage is that I just maintain my AD as I always did, removing leavers, and adding joiners, and the changes are replicated in Google apps.

Works for Security groups too (i.e. a security group of "teachers" syncs its members with a google apps mailing group of the same name).

Bit fiddly to configure, then you can just forget about it. We use Password sync too, so our users have got the same password to access computers and Google apps accounts.

Something to consider perhaps.

 

We also told our users that their old email would remain on the old system for a year or so. If they wanted to keep a few emails they could just email themselves (once the MX records had updated) if they wanted bulk email transfer I sat with them and migrated them on a case by case basis (only a few asked).