From Domino to Exchange 2007
Ok, so after having mentioned once or twice the new tools out with Exchange 2007 & ranted & raved about these products, I think its about time I eat some humble pie!!
One of the reasons I have not been keeping up with my blog is an ongoing Migration project for a client with about 600 mailboxes from IBM Domino 7.x to Exchange 2007. I was pleased that we were able to secure this tender since Seven Seas received a late invitation as an independant bidder (not recommended by MS on this project) and I worked on the entire concept, proposal & tender document along with a very capable account manager.
Kudo's to ghassan, me & the rest of the team who helped secure this!
Anyway, onto the more interesting stuff...
The solution deployed includes 2x HUB/CAS servers using NLB & an Active/Passive SCC Cluster all deployed on AMD based HP Blade C Class servers. The Exchange setup & configuration was a breeze, of course, and it wasnt long before I had it all up & running, ready for the migration configuration.
The concept was to try save some money for the client & use the Transporter Suite for to migrate the users & mailboxes accross (no requirement for Application migration here) so I proceeded to install & configure the transporter suite for testing.
The results? FRIGHTENING!!
The setup was reasonably simple, co-existance using the domino connector proved to be a problem so we decided to use SMTP based mail routing between 2 seperate domains, in theory no-problem but in this case Domino config has problems so it still doesnt work properly, but hey, thats another story not to be told here.
As for the transporter suite itself, well I found some pretty erratice behaviour coming from it, quite often the service would crash, requiring a complete restart of the server for everything to go back to normal, the MMC keeps crashing too, countles unnecessary errors are reported from the MMC which simply are NOT there when you use powershell etc. Its a pretty painful process.
Additionally, when migrating mailboxes I found anything upto 20% of the users emails wer not being migrated for one reason or another, MS claim its due to encryption / corruption, but then I checked the mails out in Notes & cant find anything wrong with them, certainly not corrupt or encrypted anyway.
(Silly me, Should have known these limitations exist with the MS Migration tools - we live, we learn)
Of course, PAB's & Archives are not migrated as part n parcell of the MS tool migration either so this makes life more interesting cos you nw have to find alternatives to move these.
Something else I learned during this R&D phase is that MS are currently releasing a new version of the Transporter Suite on a monthly basis with new fixes included, so if you have the time & patience then you could keep waiting & trying each new version.
For the rest of us though, there REALLY is not real alternative to switching to a third party tool such as Quest Notes Migrator for Exchange. This tool really rocks in terms of cost/pound of performance. reasonably priced at about 12USD/mailbox for 600 users (prices may vary according to no. of mailboxes) you honestly cannot complain when all Mailboxes, Archives & PAB's are migrated all at once in a quick easy n stable environment with minimal data loss, so far max = 4%.
Those of us who have unlimited budgets though, I would recomend checking out XitNotes its by far the easiest n most user friendly but costs a packet.... will let you check it out!!
Anyway, I guess the bottom line here - when you migrate from notes to exchange, DONT BE CHEAP, spend the extra cash on a tool to help you n you will be thankful end of day!!
One of the reasons I have not been keeping up with my blog is an ongoing Migration project for a client with about 600 mailboxes from IBM Domino 7.x to Exchange 2007. I was pleased that we were able to secure this tender since Seven Seas received a late invitation as an independant bidder (not recommended by MS on this project) and I worked on the entire concept, proposal & tender document along with a very capable account manager.
Kudo's to ghassan, me & the rest of the team who helped secure this!
Anyway, onto the more interesting stuff...
The solution deployed includes 2x HUB/CAS servers using NLB & an Active/Passive SCC Cluster all deployed on AMD based HP Blade C Class servers. The Exchange setup & configuration was a breeze, of course, and it wasnt long before I had it all up & running, ready for the migration configuration.
The concept was to try save some money for the client & use the Transporter Suite for to migrate the users & mailboxes accross (no requirement for Application migration here) so I proceeded to install & configure the transporter suite for testing.
The results? FRIGHTENING!!
The setup was reasonably simple, co-existance using the domino connector proved to be a problem so we decided to use SMTP based mail routing between 2 seperate domains, in theory no-problem but in this case Domino config has problems so it still doesnt work properly, but hey, thats another story not to be told here.
As for the transporter suite itself, well I found some pretty erratice behaviour coming from it, quite often the service would crash, requiring a complete restart of the server for everything to go back to normal, the MMC keeps crashing too, countles unnecessary errors are reported from the MMC which simply are NOT there when you use powershell etc. Its a pretty painful process.
Additionally, when migrating mailboxes I found anything upto 20% of the users emails wer not being migrated for one reason or another, MS claim its due to encryption / corruption, but then I checked the mails out in Notes & cant find anything wrong with them, certainly not corrupt or encrypted anyway.
(Silly me, Should have known these limitations exist with the MS Migration tools - we live, we learn)
Of course, PAB's & Archives are not migrated as part n parcell of the MS tool migration either so this makes life more interesting cos you nw have to find alternatives to move these.
Something else I learned during this R&D phase is that MS are currently releasing a new version of the Transporter Suite on a monthly basis with new fixes included, so if you have the time & patience then you could keep waiting & trying each new version.
For the rest of us though, there REALLY is not real alternative to switching to a third party tool such as Quest Notes Migrator for Exchange. This tool really rocks in terms of cost/pound of performance. reasonably priced at about 12USD/mailbox for 600 users (prices may vary according to no. of mailboxes) you honestly cannot complain when all Mailboxes, Archives & PAB's are migrated all at once in a quick easy n stable environment with minimal data loss, so far max = 4%.
Those of us who have unlimited budgets though, I would recomend checking out XitNotes its by far the easiest n most user friendly but costs a packet.... will let you check it out!!
Anyway, I guess the bottom line here - when you migrate from notes to exchange, DONT BE CHEAP, spend the extra cash on a tool to help you n you will be thankful end of day!!
Thanks for you’re posting on your experience with the Transporter Suite and Notes Migrator for Exchange. It is great to hear a real world example of how our tools are being used to successfully complete a migration from Notes. Thanks again!
Regards,
Ron Robbins
Product Manager, Exchange Migration
Quest Software
Ron,
A pleasure truly - thanks to you guys for a brilliant tool & especially to Simon Hendy of Q.M.E Software here in Dubai for going out of his way to help me out with evaluating NME as well as obtaining the actual licenses.
Big Up guys