EV migration across domains

[JeremyWF]

All,

My company has a big move coming up that will migrate users from a Win 2k3 forest to a Win 2k8 forest.  We currently run EV9.02 for Exchange 2003 and want to migrate user archives to another forest where we will be utilizing EV 9.02 for Exchange 2010.  We currently have a tool to migrate the Exchange mailbox data from Qwest and are looking at utilizing the EV migration tool from GlobalNet.  The only problem is that the migration will start in less than 2 months and the deal with GlobalNet has not been solidified, not to mention funded.

Requirements are:

1. Migrate from one EV/Exchange 2003 environment to a new forest/domain with a completely different EV/Exchange 2010 environment.

2. Keep the amount of interuption users experience accessing their archives as minimal as possible.

3. We are not moving all data, although that is still an option.  We would like to move only the last 180 days of data.  However not all users are moving at once.  We will be migrating users by department over a 3 month period so this "180 day" window will be different for each group of users.

I have seen documentation where it's possible to migrate EV archives via backup/restore procedures, but the documentation assumed that the Exchange/SQL dependencies remained the same.  They will not in my case.

I know that getting Symantec consultin support is preferred in a case like this.  I have already submitted through my company to get this to happen, but it doesn't look like this is going to happen.

Your help is much appreciated in this endeavor as this project has the visibility of c-level executives all throughout the organization.

[Liam_Finn1]

Firs of all the move of EV is not your biggest issue. You need to address the domain migration which will be your largest pain.

The Quest tool you are referring to i know and it has the option of bring SID history over with the migration of the users. This I highly recommend. This will help you with the migration of not only the users but their data because if you migrate the users and no SID history the users loose access to their files both personal and shared.

The SID history will help you in many ways. I believe that if you bring the SID's with the users then the service accounts and so on that are migrated will keep access to the Archive during the migration as long as you leave the archive in the old domain then work on it's migration once your AD move is complete

Professional services are preferred for this kind of move in EV but saying that it does not mean you cant do it.

Depending on your user count maybe exporting their data from the archive and reimport to tne new archive would be the cleanest way for you to migrade the data. This would be difficult if you have a very large number of users but in smaller environments it makes the move simple

[JeremyWF]

Thanks.

We are using Quest to migrate the Exchange/AD accounts.  My concern was moving the archives.  I would prefer of the users were to log out on a Friday, do the move over the weekend, and then log back in on Monday to the new forest.

While I'm an experienced SE, I'm at a very junior EV SA level.  I pretty much know the normal basic operations of EV and how to set up a new environment, but that's about it.  How does the export/import work?  Can you export a select group of archives?  E.g. can I export 50 user archives instead of all archives in the vault store, and on top of that, only export the last 180 days of data?

We are only migrating about 50 at a time, but we have close to 2500 - 3000 AD/Exchange accounts to move in total over a 3-4 month period.  We will have a dedicated 10G fiber pipe through which to transfer the data so this shouldn't be too much of a strain.

I think what would help me best is if there's any documentation that I could look at the show me the process and how it works.

[Wayne_Humphrey]

Jeremy,

Your best bet is to use a third party migration tool.  Glasshouse's Archive Shuttle & TransVault's Email Archive Migration both can make your migration seemless and much easer.

GlassHouse sells both tools, dependent on your requerments the right one will be propsed for your migration.

http://www.glasshouse.com/

[JeremyWF]

Do these tools have the ability to sync up the archives between the two different environments and keep them in sync until time to cutover to the new environment?

[Wayne_Humphrey · Accepted solution]

Well, you can do a bulk and differential, so the bulk you can do now, and do diffs, on the day of the merge.