Moving to GSuite

[MS2011]

Dear all

 

Senior SLT’s have decided that we are going to move fully to gmail/GSuite . Current setup is Exchange hybrid and 1500 users with 500Gb mailboxes dB size.

 

Any suggestions?

 

We are using G Suite on a different domain and would like migrate to main tenant.

 

Thanks

[jmak]

Assuming they haven't done a full impact assessment, you need to straight away. Almost certainly to late to influence the decision, so don't do it as a reason not to prices, just as a way to make sure you don't miss anything.

 

Are you moving away completely from on-site file servers for data storage?

Are you moving to Google cloud identity service or will you still have MS Active Directory?

What about print server?

 

Then you need a proper project plan with all activities.

 

There's no fundamental issue, but if it's not planned properly, it'll be a proper mess.

[MS2011]

Assuming they haven't done a full impact assessment, you need to straight away. Almost certainly to late to influence the decision, so don't do it as a reason not to prices, just as a way to make sure you don't miss anything.

 

Are you moving away completely from on-site file servers for data storage?

Are you moving to Google cloud identity service or will you still have MS Active Directory?

What about print server?

 

Then you need a proper project plan with all activities.

 

There's no fundamental issue, but if it's not planned properly, it'll be a proper mess.

 

No we haven’t done any full impact assessment. One SLt and head decided that we are moving to GSuite completely. Some reason they don’t like MS products, and also we are moving Bcs in their previous school they have had used Gsuite.

 

And my line manager agrees on everything and he don’t have any clue that if don’t plan properly it will be mess. We are using Gsuite on totally different domain/tenant and now they want to move to main domain.

 

We have on prep print server and continue using it I guess. File sever is staying as well, mainly for support staff. Students will be move to google drive but then again no plan for students using macs can save their work on gdrive.

 

Active directory is staying .

 

I need advice from you guys so I can save our school from mess.

 

Thanks

[willtech]

So you can add your domain in and not setup the mx mail records until your ready. With users you can change their main email over to your main domain if you do it will add their current account as a alias. Do you have it syncing with the one site ad ?

 

You might want to have a look at this email migration: https://support.google.com/a/answer/180898?hl=en#zippy=%2Cstep-move-data-from-the-legacy-system-to-google-workspace%2Cstep-add-user-accounts-in-google-workspace%2Cstep-configure-mail-delivery-to-google-workspace

 

Be aware as well google now have different plans which if you will need extra bits might cost you: https://edu.google.com/intl/en_uk/products/workspace-for-education/editions/

Edited May 16, 2021 by willtech

[MS2011]

So you can add your domain in and not setup the mx mail records until your ready. With users you can change their main email over to your main domain if you do it will add their current account as a alias. Do you have it syncing with the one site ad ?

 

You might want to have a look at this email migration: https://support.google.com/a/answer/180898?hl=en#zippy=%2Cstep-move-data-from-the-legacy-system-to-google-workspace%2Cstep-add-user-accounts-in-google-workspace%2Cstep-configure-mail-delivery-to-google-workspace

 

Be aware as well google now have different plans which if you will need extra bits might cost you: https://edu.google.com/intl/en_uk/products/workspace-for-education/editions/

 

Our primary domain added onto Gsuite.

[jmak]

Our primary domain added onto Gsuite.

Have a read of this and the links from it:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7009324

 

You've got various options including adding another domain as an alias, changing your primary domain from one to another, adding a new domain as a primary and keeping the other as an alias.

 

I would have thought that the last of those it's most likely to be the best for you.

 

Also note on the page I've linked that it says if you are a non-profit or education customer they recommend contacting them for help. I'm sure they have more experience than most people on here.

 

One of the questions I'd be asking is about options for provisioning the new accounts. I'd assume there are options for creating from the existing accounts. Whether that's a good option for you will depend on the whether formats match, whether organisational groups from whatever you've been using Google Workspace for match with your new requirements and whether there's actually anything in your existing Workspace that will be needed going forward.

 

You also need to ask about the best way to link the accounts to your AD. You definitely want single sign on synchronized, so that you only have to manage one set of usernames and passwords. I know the best way to do that for a new set up, but you should take advice from Google for your situation.

 

There's a link to contact them from the page I linked.

[MS2011]

Have a read of this and the links from it:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/7009324

 

You've got various options including adding another domain as an alias, changing your primary domain from one to another, adding a new domain as a primary and keeping the other as an alias.

 

I would have thought that the last of those it's most likely to be the best for you.

 

Also note on the page I've linked that it says if you are a non-profit or education customer they recommend contacting them for help. I'm sure they have more experience than most people on here.

 

One of the questions I'd be asking is about options for provisioning the new accounts. I'd assume there are options for creating from the existing accounts. Whether that's a good option for you will depend on the whether formats match, whether organisational groups from whatever you've been using Google Workspace for match with your new requirements and whether there's actually anything in your existing Workspace that will be needed going forward.

 

You also need to ask about the best way to link the accounts to your AD. You definitely want single sign on synchronized, so that you only have to manage one set of usernames and passwords. I know the best way to do that for a new set up, but you should take advice from Google for your situation.

 

There's a link to contact them from the page I linked.

 

Thanks mate

[paulkerton]

Get in touch with a Google for Education Partner

 

Vitalize IT, Getech, C-Learning just to name three of many.

Worth consulting experise if you're not confident of doing it yourself.

[jthompson]

When we migrated mailboxes from Exchange to Gmail, we found that some users had literally hundreds of folders (Heads of Year, in particular), both in and alongside their Inbox folder, and the Gmail interface really couldn't cope with having that many labels. If you can get users to limit themselves to a few dozen folders at most, with as little nesting as possible, that will help with the transition to Gmail.

[VeryPC]

Hey @MS2011

 

We are a proud Google for Education partner and would be happy to help you out with anything you need. We've also got our in-house specialist @johnlevis who I'm sure is more than happy to help you out too!

 

https://very-pc.co.uk/products/software/chrome-management-licences

 

- Ryan

[MS2011]

When we migrated mailboxes from Exchange to Gmail, we found that some users had literally hundreds of folders (Heads of Year, in particular), both in and alongside their Inbox folder, and the Gmail interface really couldn't cope with having that many labels. If you can get users to limit themselves to a few dozen folders at most, with as little nesting as possible, that will help with the transition to Gmail.

 

Have you done migration in house ? Did you used any third party tool?

[jthompson]

Have you done migration in house ? Did you used any third party tool?

 

Yes, we did this ourselves. That was a few years ago now (2016) and the cloud-based migration tool (i.e. Google Admin > Data Migration) didn't work for our particular on-prem Exchange setup, so we used the separate Windows utility from Google, which essentially did the same thing. It was what's now known as gwmme - https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gsmme/. That took care of migrating mailboxes, calendars and contacts. We weren't migrating any user areas into Drive or migrating from 365 or anything, so just mail, calendars and contacts from an on-prem Exchange.

[MS2011]

Dear

 

I need your help to setup split delivery from exchange 2016 to gmail.

 

1. Mx record pointing to exchange 2016 (xyz.co.uk) our primary domain.

 

2. We have setup GSuite with domain xyz.com for google classroom.

 

3. GSuite ( xyz.com ) > domains > manage domains > xyz.com is primary domain and xyz.co.uk domain verified.

 

4. I can create alias in GSuite i.e [email protected]

 

How do I setup connectors within exchange to route the email to gmail.

 

Thanks

[paulkerton]

I would absolutely recommend that you do not do split delivery, and you instead take advantage of the incoming summer and go for a big bang approach to email.

[MS2011]

I would absolutely recommend that you do not do split delivery, and you instead take advantage of the incoming summer and go for a big bang approach to email.

 

That’s what I’m going to do but if SLT want split delivery option then I want to test with few users.

[jthompson]

You might also want to look at the other way around as well: doing the split delivery from Gmail instead, after having updated your MX record(s) to point everything to Gmail. That way you know that everything will be going into Gmail mailboxes, but some stuff also getting routed on to Exchange as needed. It makes your mail service less reliant on your on-prem Exchange.

 

You can add your Exchange server as a host in Admin > Apps > Gmail > Hosts and then make use of that in routing rules created as needed in Gmail > Advanced Settings. Documentation here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/2685650?hl=en#zippy=%2Croute-messages-with-split-delivery

[MS2011]

You might also want to look at the other way around as well: doing the split delivery from Gmail instead, after having updated your MX record(s) to point everything to Gmail. That way you know that everything will be going into Gmail mailboxes, but some stuff also getting routed on to Exchange as needed. It makes your mail service less reliant on your on-premhl=en#zippy=%2Croute-messages-with-split-delivery"]https://support.google.com/a/answer/2685650?hl=en#zippy=%2Croute-messages-with-split-delivery[/url]

 

Thanks !

 

That’s the plan once we move everything and point mx record gmail. I want route email gmail to exchange.

 

But for now how do I setup exchange to gmail split delivery?

[jthompson]

Ah ok. I'm not familiar with Exchange these days, so can't really help you on that side of things, but the Google side of things might be covered for you here - https://support.google.com/a/answer/9228551?hl=en

[MS2011]

You might also want to look at the other way around as well: doing the split delivery from Gmail instead, after having updated your MX record(s) to point everything to Gmail. That way you know that everything will be going into Gmail mailboxes, but some stuff also getting routed on to Exchange as needed. It makes your mail service less reliant on your on-prem Exchange.

 

You can add your Exchange server as a host in Admin > Apps > Gmail > Hosts and then make use of that in routing rules created as needed in Gmail > Advanced Settings. Documentation here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/2685650?hl=en#zippy=%2Croute-messages-with-split-delivery

 

What is the best way to do the migration? Point MX record to gmail first and then migrate data ? Or do the migration first and then change MX record?

[jthompson]

Thinking back, I migrated first, ahead of the MX record change. That will have involved a number of lengthy migration runs. I will have done the bulk of the migration ahead of time, and then on the scheduled day of cutover, I'll have run the migration again to cover the final few days of stuff coming in to Exchange.

[paulkerton]

What is the best way to do the migration? Point MX record to gmail first and then migrate data ? Or do the migration first and then change MX record?

MX first, then give it the usual 24 hours for DNS replication. That way you shouldn't lose any emails once the MX records have replicated.

[MS2011]

MX first, then give it the usual 24 hours for DNS replication. That way you shouldn't lose any emails once the MX records have replicated.

 

[emoji106]

[DavR]

Will you be keeping Microsoft Office on any workstations, either school wide, or at least in the school office?

 

Depending on your MIS and various other programs, you may want to consider whether any of those still need locally installed Office to generate reports or letters.

[MS2011]

Will you be keeping Microsoft Office on any workstations, either school wide, or at least in the school office?

 

Depending on your MIS and various other programs, you may want to consider whether any of those still need locally installed Office to generate reports or letters.

 

Yes, we are keeping MS office on few computes, mostly admin and some other dept. For sims we do need local office installed I.e excel.

 

Are you fully google? Or you do also use MS office and windows 10 client ?

[DavR]

We're running G Suite and local full MS Office parallel..... I only mentioned that one as it's one of the pitfalls I know other schools have fallen into, believing that G Suite can completely replace their MS Office licensing. Not always so.