Notes to Exchange Migration
Eventually was made decision to migrate existing IBM Notes users to Exchange on premises.
Mixed environment
4000 mailboxes
Large and old mailfiles
No archive
Resources
The Challenge
Mixed environment between Exchange 2010 and IBM Notes 9.0.1. Lack of deeper experience in supporting Exchange. Transitioning end users business critical applications and minimising any impact in their work. Tackling huge Notes mailfiles and lack of an archiving system. Migrating Notes applications, Document libraries and shared mailboxes, especially in dependency with daily replications with other organisations. Impact on mailflow within own environment and others in close connections. Specific demands for specific environmet requirements. High profile staff with continuouis mobility requirements. Unexpected technical challenges and over 1/3 of Active Directory inconsistency. Managing resources during migration and end user requirements in post-migration situation. Capability of Service Desk staff to handle post-migration issues for end users.
The Solution
Moving to Exchange 2013 as an on-prem environment. Scaling and configuring 4 Exchange 2013 servers in High Availability scenario with loadbalancers. Preparing mail bridges between Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013 and IBM Notes environment, and External/Internal routing with other organisations. Keeping IBM Domino servers as external SMTP until environment is shifted to Exchange. Resetting mobile profiles on MobileIron to migrate devices and users from Notes to Exchange. Testing with existing applications, finding equivalents, a good opportunity to introduce a mail archive system for managing mail data. Initial end user testing with IT staff, expending to HQ and in the third phase with majority of staff. Building knowledge and necessary procedures for future support, training Service Desk staff and end users. Running migration batches during weekends and allowing to settle down over week days, reducing migration load onto the Supporting staff.
The Results
Exchange 2010 users migrated to Exchange 2013. Intial 6-months testing with IT staff and HQ completed without problems, the rest of staff migrated from IBM Notes to Exchnage 2013 within 30 days with a fewer minor issues due to Active Directory inconsistency. Introduced CommVault mail archiving system to handle mail data in post-migration phase as a part of overall migration process with archiving data older than 1 year. Group calendar application migrated to Exchange environment as well.
- Mail migration 95%
- Mobile users 100%
- Mail flow 95%