Exchange Migration to Office 365 can change behind the scenes – wave 15 rolls in

Posted on by rkmigblog

In these days Microsoft is moving from wave 14 to wave 15 for Office 365 cloud installations. This means a service transition from Exchange 2010 Server backend to Exchange 2013 Server backend, Lync 2010 to Lync 2013 and other cool updates.

However, if you have travelled a long way to get a smooth migration setup (with all the back and forth of finding the right strategy and technical conditions) Microsoft can make you a big surprise by changing your Exchange target infrastructure. You started your migration project with Exchange 2010 in the cloud as target system and you end up with Exchange 2013.

This is “by design” when moving services to the cloud – as MVP Sean McNeill stated in his post [http://office365evangelist.com/?p=938]:
“This is an important questions because with a move to the cloud, the company give up some control on when, and even if, you will go through an upgrade of the service. The company now relies on the Service Provider, Microsoft in this case, to handle the upgrade and the cadence of the upgrades. This needs to be fully understood and accepted by a company moving to the Cloud.”

To mitigate the risk of forcing the customers to update in times where it is just neither “comfortable” nor “amusable” – as it might be in the middle of an Exchange migration project – Microsoft offers to postpone the update one time. The Office 365 admins receive a notification e-mail which announces the update schedule. From that information the customer has 3 weeks to decide that he better postpone or let Microsoft execute. When he decides to postpone, Microsoft will not start the update for the next 2 months. The timespan to complete the wave 15 upgrade is end of 2013 latest, which means your upgrade cannot be later than this deadline.
http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/upgrade/what-to-expect-during-the-service-upgrade.aspx

For more information check the Office 365 Upgrade Center: http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/upgrade/office-365-service-upgrade-center-for-enterprise.aspx

Dell/Quest Software seems to recognize first problems in running migration projects and recommends to postpone the Office 365 tenant upgrade by contacting Microsoft.

https://support.quest.com/SolutionDetail.aspx?id=SOL105116&pr=Notes+Migrator+for+Exchange

Recovery Manager for Exchange: New Release 5.5

Posted on by rkmigblog

Dell announced the GA of Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange, Version 5.5. This version is ready to support Exchange 2013 mailboxes and archive mailboxes as well as Office 365 based mailboxes. The tool can be installed on Windows 2012 and Windows 8 and works together with Outlook 2013 as interface. A new Recovery Manager console GUI helps to search more detailed for strings in the mailbox stores. The deletion of items in writable storages is also supported.

Quest Migration Manager for Exchange(R) – Support for single hop Exchange 2003 -> 2013 migration

Posted on by rkmigblog

Updated:

On Redmond Magazine, an article was launched that announces the new Version of QMM (QMM 8.10). The Software is not yet available for download (actual by May, 12th 2013), but promises the single-hop Migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013 which can make a difference for many large IT customers when comparing with Microsoft native approaches.

Due to the Redmond Magazine article:

“One of the exciting things we can do with this product…is  the ability to migrate in a direct single-step migration from Exchange 2003 or Exchange  2000 into the new version of Office 365 or Exchange 2013,” said Ron Robbins,  a product manager at Dell, in a phone interview. “It’s one thing that Microsoft  is not able to support, given the fact that they don’t support legacy platforms  that long and the fact that their native migration solutions don’t migrate  directly from those platforms any longer.”

See the full article here:

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2013/04/24/updated-migration-manager-for-exchange.aspx

 

With the actual version of Quest Migration Manager for Exchange®, migrating mailboxes from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013 will require a 2 hop migration process. You have to install an Exchange 2010 transition server into your existing Exchange 2003 environment. You will then perform a 1st hop as an Intra-Org Exchange migration to move the mailboxes to the Exchange 2010 server. The 2nd hop will be an Inter-Org Exchange migration to the target Exchange 2013 organization.

 2hop migration Exchange 2003 to 2013

Although there is special software from Quest available to support the 1st hop, Migration Manager for Exchange Intra-Org Edition, the procedure is still a bit long winded.

Good news:

The plans of Dell/Quest Software are that the next version of Quest Migration Manager for Exchange will support a single hop migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013 in Inter-Org Exchange migration scenarios directly without the requirement of a transition server.

The new version is awaited for Q2/2013.

(Source: http://communities.quest.com/message/73072#73072)

Notes Migrator for Exchange – New Release 4.6.1

Posted on by rkmigblog

Recently Quest Software® (now a part of Dell) announced a new release of the frequently used software package Notes Migrator for Exchange. The new release comes as Notes Migrator for Exchange 4.6.1 and supports most actual Notes 7.0.4 as source E-Mail System and Exchange up to Versions 2010 SP3 and 2013 as target. Multiple archives can now be migrated into a single pst file by using the SSDM Utility. Furthermore, a couple of improvements have been implemented when migrating from Notes to Microsoft Office 365® Exchange Online mailboxes.
NOTE: Notes Migrator 4.4 is shifted to “Limited Support” by now.
You can download Notes Migrator 4.6.1 here:
https://support.quest.com/Download/InstallDetail.aspx?fID=4581748&probjid=1-7GCB8-247&utm_campaign=36216-19732-su-gl-notesmigratorforexchange%20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eloqua