Proven Methods To Migrate To The Cloud Using Office 365!

by Merry Joness Marketing

When moving to the cloud, one has to consider a number of factors, however, by adopting MS Office 365 eco-system, this path can be smoothened.

The process to move to the cloud has to be taken seriously. Though if businesses think of money-saving during this transition to migrate to Office 365, then it is just not possible; however, a proper process and planning from a quality infrastructure to the cloud eco-system is a great undertaking.

So, Microsoft is putting its efforts to encourage all types of company to start migrating operations to move to the cloud, especially when Office 365 is available and contributing the most to make this transition smoothers. Office 365 is designed from the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft Lync Server and SharePoint 2010 cloud versions. Some of the subscriptions for Office 365 include the advantage of accessing Office Pro Plus and Office web apps of Microsoft.

With numerous Microsoft Office 365 products, thoroughly covering the whole moving transition is a big challenge. Though now it is the time to check out the way to perform multiple common tasks using Office 365 eco-system and think of some certain issues that you may encounter during this process.

Names Of Domain

A common question about this process is how it will impact the domain names of a company. Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange are fully dependent on the Active Directory. So, the way in which the domain names of your company are impacted depends upon your selection of maintaining on-premise Active Directory or choosing to utilize identity federation.

So, if you decide to keep hosting the Active Directory, however, are not interested in handling hassle to implement the identity federation, choosing Office 365 to manage domain names from partial redelegation process. The company will enjoy ownership of its domain name; however specific functions like web hosting and email get redirected to the servers of Office 365.

Here Microsoft itself designs the redelegating process of the domain to utilize with Office 365 without any pain. Using administrative console of Office 365, you can include domain name easily. This process makes it very easy to include existing names of the domain to Office 365.

Though before adding a domain to Office 365, you have to authenticate your ownership of the domain by giving your credentials of sign-in for domain host or registrar.

Groups & Users

To work with groups and users in the Office 365 eco-system, you need to follow some acclimatization. So, rather exposing the computers and active directory users’ console, Microsoft offers users with an interface that is administrative console which carries a mechanism to manage and make user accounts.

There are several solutions to manage accounts of users from Microsoft. In case you already own the Active Directory eco-system, the best choice will be the synchronization of the Active Directory. It makes a collaboration within the MS Office 365 cloud and local Active Directory of your company. After that, you can keep using the present infrastructure of Active Directory and management tools of Active Directory.

The greatest thing that one has to keep in mind about the synchronization of Active Directory is that; this process works in one way only. The Active Directory contents get copied on to the cloud; however, changes which you have made to the cloud will not be copied to the local Active Directory. However, technically you can make the change to the accounts of users via cloud interface and these changes will not be copied to the local Active Directory. Moreover, it will be overwritten if you use synchronization process.

Second option to manage accounts of users is to utilize identity federation. The main concept of identity federation is to retain the control of your Active Directory eco-system. By applying Active Directory Federation Service version 2.0, businesses can allow users to easily log into the cloud from their credentials of Active Directory.

So, if you plan to perform the synchronization of Active Directory, Microsoft clearly recommends users to get identity federation enabled. Though to use synchronization of Active Directory by not enabling the identity federation, one has to redelegate the domain in a way it was narrated earlier.

Begin In The Cloud

It has to be noted that it is not the prerequisite thing to utilize Office 365 for deploying the local Active Directory. Similarly, one can choose to use the on-premise Office 365 deployment for moving to the cloud, but only if you do not run the on-premise apps which need access to the Active Directory.

With an administrative interface, one can make accounts for users directly in the Office 365 eco-system; but, avoid doing it in case you conduct directory synchronization. Using Web-based wizard, you can make accounts for users one by one, and administrative console allows one to make accounts in high volume by crowding the CSV file with the information of user accounts and importing it. From the administrative console, you can opt to download the blank or the sample CSV file.

Way to Migrate Present Users

Simply like Office 365 enables us to make new accounts for users in the cloud, one can also move his present users of the company. Office 365 integrates Exchange Server 2010. Though data of mailbox gets stored in the mailbox server, still mailbox is known for having the Active Directory quality. Simply like that, moving an account also intends to migrate the mailbox of a user.

For migrations, one can make a coexistence scenario to which you include users who have on-premise mailboxes on Exchange, though the mailboxes of other users present in the cloud.

Having that said, the migrations of users to Office 365 are meant as migrations of mailboxes. So, keeping coexistence aside, Office 365 stands by 2 kinds of migrations of mailboxes for which one should conduct an IMAP that is internet message access protocol migration and migrations of on-premise Exchange.

Migrations Based On IMAP

While migrating the data mailbox from Exchange 2000, or Exchange 5.5 or from the mail system of a non-Exchange, you should utilize the IMAP migration. Though the real migration process is quite simple, yet it would demand a little preparation from you.

So, before performing the IMAP migration process, you should make Exchange mailboxes of each user whose data in mailbox you need to migrate. Moreover, there will also be a need to make the CSV file using email, user ID and Password for every mailbox that requires migration. After assembling the needed data, choose the email migration in Outlook Web App for conducting the real migration.

Currently, Office 365 is available in the beta testing phase and it is not clear that how many users can be migrated effectively. From the migration interface of email, you can learn that there should be less than one thousand mailboxes; however, the documentation shows that you should conduct large-scale migrations via batch-based mailbox migration. This documentation implies that one should keep batches limited to 2500 mailboxes.

Migrations Of Exchange Server

Just like IMAP migration process, the Exchange server migration migrates data of mailboxes to the cloud. This process migrates all the distribution groups, contacts and messages.

The migrations of Exchange Server can be done in two ways. The simple migration migrates mailboxes of Exchange instantly, but the staged migration moves mailboxes in subsets. When there is a coexistence scenario, you should use staged migration.

To conduct the simple migration process, firstly you should specify the type of migration. Here, you can select to conduct the Exchange 2007, and the migration, or choose Exchange 2003, then migration. The only big difference here is in the Exchange 2007 which utilizes Autodiscover feature to detect the settings of connection automatically. The Exchange 2003 alternative requires you to manually describe these settings.

As obviously, this process can be time taking for completion. It is mainly true with those having several mailboxes. Office 365 utilizes 2 kinds of synchronization solutions to balance these mailboxes during the process.

At the time of starting synchronization, the data in mailbox first gets copied to the cloud. Then, Exchange conducts a complementary synchronization on every 24 hours. This synchronization makes a copy of all new data mailbox to the cloud.

Once the migration of all mailboxes gets completed, the Exchange sends the email indicating the completion of the migration process. There are two attachments in the message. One attachment is named as MigrationErrors.csv which lists those mailboxes to which migration is failed. Second attachment carries an attachment namely MigrationStatistics.csv which contains details of total migrated items.

The MailboxStatistics.csv file comes with a password for every single user as they need it while log into the cloud, but once they login, they should change this password immediately.

Any query related to office 365 migration contact Microsoft Office expert Server Consultancy

email contact@serverconsultancy.co.uk or call us at 0203 727 2000