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If you missed the previous parts in this article series please read:

• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 1)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 2)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 3)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 4)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 5)

Brief

At this point in the series, everything is installed and configured. Message Transfer, Directory Synchronization and free/busy lookups are working both ways between GroupWise and Exchange 2007.

This article will walk through the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Migration Wizard. We'll start by outlining the pre-requisites and clearing up some confusion. We'll then walk through the migration process end to end.

What Bits Do We Need Where?

The Exchange 2003 Deployment tools include the Active Directory Account Cleanup Wizard and the Migration Wizard. The Migration Wizard includes options to migrate from previous versions of Exchange, Lotus Notes or GroupWise among other things, as shown in Figure 1.

Tip: If you see options for GroupWise 4.x and 5.x, you have not upgraded Exchange Server to SP2.

Figure 1: The Migration Wizard migration type page

Before you can run a migration using the Migration Wizard you have to meet several prerequisites. Let's clear up some common confusion here;

• You need to install the Novell NetWare client. The most recent version that supports Windows Server 2003 as of this writing is 4.91 SP4. The migration wizard will prompt for the location of the GroupWise domain database wpdomain.db, and without the NetWare client you simply cannot find it.
• You also need to install the GroupWise client. The actual migration is client side driven and the migration wizard simply uses the GroupWise client to open mailboxes and copy messages. GroupWise 7 client does work, but officially as per the Microsoft Support Policy you should install version 6.5x. Exchange support for Novell GroupWise version 6.x and 7.x
• You do not actually need any of the Microsoft Connectors, neither the Connector for Novell GroupWise or the Calendar Connector in order to do a mailbox migration using the Migration Wizard. You do not need the API on the GroupWise Post Office, the External Foreign Domain, the Gateway or the Link configuration. You only need these components for co-existence.

From Table 1, you can see that if you intend to co-exist and migrate using the native Migration Wizard then you need all of the components installed on the Exchange Server 2003 Server.

If you intend to migrate without coexistence using the Quest utility then the components are all installed on a Migration Workstation and you do not actually require Exchange 2003 at all!

Exchange 2003 only comes into play when coexistence is an issue. If it is, then the coexistence column above gives you the pre-requisites for your Exchange 2003 server.

Note: There are more prerequisites for a Quest migration workstation which we will cover in the next article.

Proxy Access

Each mailbox that you want to migrate needs to grant proxy access to a migration account. Proxy Access in GroupWise is similar to shared access or delegate access in Outlook. The Migration Wizard uses its own GroupWise mailbox to log into GroupWise, but it then opens up mailboxes selected for Migration by proxy. Unless you grant full proxy access to the mailboxes being migrated then it will not work.

You grant proxy access on a case by case basis using the Security options from the Tools, Options' menu in the GroupWise client as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Opening the Security options in the GroupWise client

In the Security options, switch to the Proxy Access tab, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: The Proxy Access tab

Use the Add User button to add in the GroupWise mailbox that you intend to use with the Migration Wizard, and then under Access rights for' select all of the available options. In Figure 3 you can see I have created an account called Migrate Account.

So that covers a single mailbox, but what about assigning proxy rights for all mailboxes? Well, there are varied ways to grant proxy access to multiple GroupWise mailboxes.

You can change GroupWise passwords for the batch of users being migrated, log in to the mailboxes one by one, grant proxy access and then export the GroupWise contacts. This is tedious, but has some advantages.

• The Migration Wizard does not migrate Address Books, so these need to be exported and converted at some point anyway
• You do not have to request or trust users to grant proxy access or export their own address books, and you bypass the coordination and logistical headache this would cause
• It changes the GroupWise password for users, so that there is no chance they can continue to use GroupWise after the migration.

There are other automated methods that can be used.

The GroupWise ProxySet utility from Caledonia is very useful, but has a cost per GroupWise post office. My experience would say that for a migration of less than say 50 mailboxes, it is probably simpler to change GroupWise password, log in to mailboxes and grant proxy access. For larger migrations, automation is the way to go.

Migrating Mailboxes

Once all of the prerequisites have been met, and the various tools, component and connectors have been installed, the migration is pretty straightforward.

Locate the Microsoft Exchange group on the All Programs menu, then drill down through the Deployment program group and run the Migration Wizard.

On the Welcome screen press Next>.

Select the option to Migrate from Novell GroupWise' as shown in Figure 1.

The next screen, Figure 4, simply recaps what we have covered earlier about the requirements for the GroupWise client and the Microsoft Connectors.

Figure 4: A reminder about the prerequisites

Press Next>.

The next screen, shown in Figure 9, gives you the option to do a one or two step migration. The one step migration will extract data from GroupWise and import it directly into Exchange mailboxes. The two step "Extract Migration Files only" option, gives you more flexibility by letting you edit the migration files created to control what is migrated, as described below.

Whichever option you choose creates a series of Primary (PRI) and Secondary (SEC) migration files, along with a Packing List (PKL) file. These files will typically be created in a directory called GrpWise.001 which you can see in Figure 5, where the number will increment for each run of the migration wizard.

These migration files are used in the creation of PST files or in the import of data into Exchange mailboxes.

Figure 5: The GrpWise.001 directory with the migration files

The PKL file can be edited in notepad, shown in Figure 6. It simply lists the PRI and SEC files that were extracted during the migration run.

Figure 6: Editing the PKL file

Removing lines from this PKL file will remove the corresponding mailboxes from being imported into Exchange if the Migration Wizard is run using the Import from Migration Files' option shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Starting the migration and selecting the import option

Note:It's worth disabling Anti Virus scanning for TMP, PRI, SEC and PKL files. There is a high probability that there will be virus infected mail and attachments within the GroupWise database, and Anti Virus quarantining or cleansing of mail or attachment during the GroupWise extraction process can lead to issues later during the import process. AV scanning also slows things down, so I would simply turn your AV software off during the migration. Obviously once the migration is complete perform a thorough scan of the Exchange system to remove any migrated viruses!

You will of course need somewhere to put these migration files and I normally create the directory structure shown in Figure 8, on a disk volume that has free space far in excess of the total GroupWise PO database size.

Figure 8: The directory structure for migration files

If you do not need the flexibility of editing the migration files, choose One Step Migration (Recommended) and specify a location for the migration files as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Selecting a one or two step migration

Press Next>.

The Migration Destination screen shown in Figure 10, gives you two options, and it is worth some consideration which one you pick here.

While the obvious option would simply be to migrate everything directly to the Exchange 2003 server, this can be very time consuming. By way of a real world example, the most recent migration I have been involved in had GroupWise 6.x running on a dual core server with 1GB of RAM and a 10/100 NIC, which is not an uncommon spec for an ageing GroupWise Server. Migrating to a dual core Exchange Server with 4GB RAM took just over 9 hours for less than 6 GB of data! In the above example I chose to migrate directly to Exchange, but ONLY for the last 4 months worth of data.

So the first time we ran the Migration Wizard we chose Migrate to a computer running Exchange Server, but for subsequent migrations we chose Migrate to .pst files, (hence the PST files directory we created earlier shown in Figure 8).

Figure 10: Selecting the migration destination, Exchange server or PST file

Note: If you choose to extract GroupWise data and create .pst files, the migration will fail if these .pst files exceed 2GBytes in size. Remember the Migration Wizard predates the Unicode PST file.

Note: Do not be tempted to install Outlook 2003 on the Exchange Server to raise the limit of PST using the MaxLargeFileSize registry value as detailed in How to configure the size limit for both (.pst) and (.ost) files in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003. It does not work, and it will break the Migration Wizard. If you see the error mailmig.exe - Unable to Locate Component MMFMIG32.DLL you can download MMFMIG32.DLL from DllDump.com.

For now, let's assume we can do a direct migration. Choose the Exchange 2003 Server running the Microsoft Connector. If there is only one it should be chosen automatically. Select an Information store: and press Next>.

The GroupWise Domain screen shown in Figure 11 simply requires the location of the wpdomain.db GroupWise database file, and a GroupWise mailbox name and password. The path can be UNC, or drive letter, either work.

Figure 11: Specifying the location of the GroupWise Domain

Press Next>.

The GroupWise Postoffice screen, shown in Figure 12, will list the PO that you are migrating from.

Figure 12: Selecting the GroupWise Postoffice to migrate from

Press Next>.

On the Migration Information page, shown in Figure 13, you have the option to select whether or not to migrate information which can be used to create mailboxes using the Information to create mailboxes checkbox. This option is provided because the Migration Wizard can be used to perform a migration where there is no coexistence in which case you would leave the box checked.

In our situation the user obeject in Active Directory have been created by the Microsoft Connector for Novell GroupWise. However, there is no harm leaving it checked, just in case there are GroupWise users that have not got AD accounts!

Figure 13: Selecting the information to migrate

Press Next>.

On the Account Migration screen, shown in Figure 14, select the accounts you wish to migrate and then press Next>.

Figure 14: Selecting accounts to migrate

The Container For New Windows Accounts screen, shown in Figure 15, is here to cater for the need to create new accounts if they do not already exist. If they do, the migration wizard will find and match them on the next screen and present any inconsistencies for you to resolve. In our situation all of our AD accounts have been created in the GroupWise Users OU, so I select this out of habit. It does not matter which OU I select here as this container/OU is only used in the creation of new accounts.

Figure 15: The Container For New Windows Accounts screen

Press Next>.

The next window, shown in Figure 16, gives you a chance to check the account matches. The Migration Wizard should find a match for all GroupWise mailboxes with AD user objects and the Find Existing Account and Create New Account options should be grayed out. If they are not, then resolving the inconsistencies is not rocket science.

Figure 16: GroupWise Mailboxes to Active Directory accounts

At this point press Next>, stand back and let the migration begin as shown in Figure 17!

Figure 17: The migration progress

The migration kicks in from here, and with the options we have chosen will first perform an extract of GroupWise mailboxes, and then perform an import of these extracted migration files into Exchange. Events are logged to the Application Event log to monitor progress.

Summary

So after 6 articles we have finally done a migration! In the next article we will first cover how to migrate GroupWise Address Books into Outlook before moving onto look at how to migrate using the Quest migration suite.

About co-author Declan Conroy

Declan Conroy is an IT consultant specializing primarily in Microsoft technologies including Exchange and Active Directory. Having previously worked for companies like Hewlett Packard and Compaq both as internal IT support, middle management and as a Professional Services consultant, Declan founded Cheddon Consulting Limited in April 2005. Since then Cheddon Consulting have migrated over 150,000 mailboxes to Exchange Server.

You can contact Declan here, or through his blog.

If you missed the previous parts in this article series please read:

• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 1)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 2)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 3)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 4)
• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 - Interoperability and Migration (Part 5)

Author: Nathan Winters

Nathan Winters is a Unified Communications Consultant for Dimension Data. Midway through 2006 Nathan founded the Microsoft Messaging and Mobility User Group UK. In April 2007 Nathan was awarded an MVP (Exchange Server) for his work with MMMUG and contributions to the Mark Minasi Forum. Nathan is a regular contributor to the MSExchange.org website. You can contact Nathan at Nathan@clarinathan.co.uk or through his blog.