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Exchange only migration approach

QMM 8.13, Source 2007 SP3, Target 2010 SP3

This is to be an Exchange only migration with approx. 1100 mailboxes. The do not want to migrate AD at all. Prior to us engaging they created all 1100 AD accounts with mailboxes in their their target environment. The source company is not legally owned yet, so no trust, DNS is in place.

Their plan is to have us migrate the mailboxes, and then at some point in the future give the users new laptops joined to the target domain, and instruct them to start using the new target account. Until then, they will use their source domain laptop and AD account, with their mailbox residing in the target.

I have QMM installed and configured using lmhost & host files, and plan on testing mail and calendar sync this week, but I don't think I'm going to have much luck with this. Without at least an outgoing trust from the target domain, I don't think the tool will be able to link the target mailbox and apply rights to the source account. For that matter, unless I'm missing something, they wouldn't be able to manually create a linked mailbox either.

With the testing I've done thus far, I have the DSA configured, and ran a migration session on a test account, but because the target account is already there and enabled, it didn't change the mailbox to a linked mailbox. I'm thinking maybe I should manually disable the target AD account first, and then it would change it to a linked mailbox?

Just looking for ideas, advice, suggestions on how I should be approaching this.

  • You don't need trusts to do the content migration per se.

    I also don't see that you really need to do a linked mailbox at all? Users simply will need to be educated that they will have to re-enter their creds to open their e-mail post cutover and until they get their new laptops.

    I work like this everyday with mailboxes I have in customers' and Partners' orgs.

    As far as the mechanics of the migration go, you can just match with the existing accounts.  However, before you can send the content over, I believe you will first need to destroy the existing mailboxes as otherwise QMM will be cranky about not wanting to migrate content into them.

  • Ok so I perform the AD migration to merge the accounts, let the DSA stamp, & sync the content. Then the user logs in with their source creds as usual, and uses the target creds to open Outlook?
  • Pretty much. You will of course need to run CPUU to cutover their Outlook profile before the users start using their new mailboxes. Make sure that DNS is presenting clients with Autodiscover information correctly (I am assuming a namespace change).
  • Ya DNS is going to be an issue, but for testing I guess I'll use host files. Do I really need to use CPUU if we just delete and recreate the Outlook profile? That's the approach the customer wants to take.
  • Nope. The main "inconvenience" the users will face is loss of auto-complete as I don't think 2K7 stores that in the mailbox as all of the newer platforms do.  They will lose rules too if they have any.

  • As JohnnyQuest pointed out this is possible however there are some limitations to this.

    Technical Support is more of a break/fix type of support and not trained in scenarios to meet specific business needs or requirements. So all ideas, advice, and suggestions made here should be tested in a test environment before production.
  • There is a very simple solution to this problem. I will recommend you to go with the tools rather than the manual method. You can use exchange migration tools which are easy to use and provides fast and efficient working. I was also asking the same question sometime before, I have tried all the methods and then I found this tool which has helped me a lot. You can also try this tool, at first you can start with the trial version and if you like this tool then you can switch to the pro version of this tool if you like the working of the tool - www.shoviv.com/exchange-migration.html