O365 to O365 migration tools - any experience?

[Paid_Peanuts]

We have been asked to investigate consolidating existing O365 tenancys into a single O365 tenancy.

We have schools which use Email / OneDrive / SharePoint / Teams.

 

I have investigated Microsofts built in tools to do such things, however they all have their quirks. For example the Security & Compliance PST export of mailboxs aren't in a nice format. They don't allow for easy merging into the users new mailbox - the PST contains folders such as [email protected] (Primary) then a load of sub folders, one of which contains the users old Inbox structure. Also the calendar from the source mailbox isn't merged, instead it exists as another calendar named 'Calendar' - useful! Thanks Microsoft.

It would seem if we want the migration to be as smooth as possible with the minimum of disruption for staff/students and IT support we need to be looking at paid for 3rd party tools.

 

I have looked online at products such as:

• CodeTwo https://www.codetwo.com/office-365-migration/
  
• Quest https://www.quest.com/products/on-demand-migration/
  
• SkyKick https://www.skykick.com/blog/office-365-to-office-365-migrations/
  
• Cloudiway https://cloudiway.com/solutions/office-365-to-office-365-migration/
  

To name but a few.

 

Has anyone used any of the products listed above or any others not listed? How did they perform, would you recommend?

 

What have others done / are planning on doing when it comes to migrating from one O365 tenancy to another? Have you migrated users data for them? Put the onus on the user to migrate what they want to keep? Have you migrated anything at all?

 

Looking at some of the products listed above, the costs can quite quickly rise. In order to keep costs to a minimum consideration has to be given to whose data you choose to migrate. Using paid for tools above to migrate everyones data can be quite costly.

 

Interested to know what others have done, approx. what they paid to migrate their schools.

[nwkeene]

We used the Kernel Office 365 migration tools from Nucleus Technologies they have two versions, a simpler version which i'd recommend... and a full blown version... but both use the outlook profile on the machine, both need a global admin account on both tenants and neither can use MFA...

 

We did a Office 365 to Office 365 migration to bring our disparate tenancies under 1 umbrella tenant... not cheap... £1500 for 1000 mailboxes... There are no 'free' mechanisms and no Microsoft tools really... there are lots of 'kludges' where you can export a PST from then security section of the Office 365 Admin console... but not simple...

 

We had the added issue of keeping the same domain name, so had to copy the mailboxes, delete the source domain, add it to the destination domain and then change the alias on all the mailboxes.. so the down time is a concern... took us 4 days to migrate 150 mailboxes.. in that time they had no email access...

 

Not moving domains is a lot simpler and the new users can get access the moment the account is created on the new tenant... and then they wait whilst the copy happens...

Preparation is key... we had users with 40Gig mailboxes which slowed the process somewhat... so get users on board early... cleanup their mailboxes... etc

 

I've only done the first 150 users... and i'm only planning to move staff accounts... Student accounts will be created afresh...

 

my 2p

 

PS This only does Email... share point and one drive is another thing i'm about to think about...

Edited December 17, 2019 by nwkeene

[mb2k01]

I have used the CodeTwo product to do exactly this - in fact, I've used it today to rescan and do an up to date sync of some too!

Like you I looked at the built in options and was left unimpressed for various reasons. I opted to give CodeTwo a go largely as it was quite modestly priced and also had a trial period where I could prove it worked etc.

 

Other than the CodeTwo product I've technically used Veeam to do similar before too - backup a mailbox from one tenant and the do a re-directed restore to a mailbox in a different tenant. That was quite useful as I could push the content in to a subfolder rather than have everything appear in the main inbox

[ToweringTechy]

I done a migration a couple years ago and i still have the powershell script i used. Basically, use the eDiscorvery, download all users mailboxes as separate psts. run my powershell script which will move the folders in the pst around to make them look like a proper mailbox. Reupload them to the new tenant and away you go.

[round2it]

Codetwo all the way they just work used for exchange to o365

[jaminben]

Anyone managed to migrate Teams from one tenant to another and keep all the chat history, permissions etc?