eek.. migration of GroupWise Client to Exchange. Here's what we learned after migrating a mere 70 mailboxes.
We eval'd a few of the few GW_2_exchsrs migration utils out there: CompuSven E-Mail Shuttle, Transend Migrator (a.k.a Unity), OpenOne Direct-to-One, MS GW5MIG, Novell GW Plug-in for OL2k. We found all tools failed to capture the contents of all containers within a GWC (we produced a comparative summary chart of the products, available to you on request). We even spoke with two vendors who would perform the migration for us so long as we signed off on the fact that not all mailbox items would convey--seems this troublesome GWC migration business is pretty familiar territory among those in that trade. Eventually, we settled on a manual, desktop migration of the mailboxes. You may say 'ouch' now. We used Transend Migrator which requires Novell GW Plug-in for OL2k to get things started. Then cleaned up failed migrations with good ol' Outlook import/export. The GW site did not institute a mailbox limit policy, so lesjessay it took a long time to migrate a relatively small number of mailboxes. Regardless of the effort, megs of email were abandoned on the GW mail server. To remedy that situation, we simply (a' hem) set user expectations, and allowed them access to their old mailboxes for a few months via GWIA. For 5000 users, I guess I'd resort to the yucky MS GW5MIG and set user expectations. Alternatively, push the GW Plug-in out to all the clients and have them perform their own migration. We provided users the following helpful head's up: Messages * Messages with and without attachments will migrate into Outlook. * Items within a Shared Folder of the owner appear to migrate, but the same items may not migrate for invitees of a Shared Folder. Calendar * Some events may need to be recreated in Outlook. * Recurring appointments will be broken out into individual appointments. Meeting requests will loose the invitees. * Tasks migrate into their own folder and need to be moved into the Tasks folder in Outlook. * Reminder Notes do not appear to migrate. Address Book * Address Books created by the user appear to migrate into Outlook. * "System" and "Shared" address books do not migrate. * Groups within a personal address book will need to be recreated. Folders * The Shared Folder of the owner appears to migrate, but the Shared Folder of invitees does not. * Nested folders (other than Shared) appear to migrate. * Archive folders do not migrate. * Outlook arranges folder hierarchy alphabetically. If a user notices certain items did not migrate, there are two options for potentially retrieving those items. 1. GroupWise mailboxes will remain accessible post-migration through GroupWise Web Access. 2. Contact the HelpDesk to arrange direct access into the mailbox through the GroupWise client. In any case, geezus.. good freakin' luck with your migration. Tim. -----Original Message----- From: Charles Marriott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 7:19 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: Migration tools for GroupWise to E2K I haven't done a GW migration for awhile and was wondering if anyone that has had a need for any 3rd party tools or did the MS tools work out ok? Which 3rd party tools are best based on your experience? 5000 users. tia, Charles _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
