Moving Exchange Emails to Google Apps

[Gilbo]

Alright, I think this a complicated one; I've been doing a lot of googling and am looking for some recommendations. I want to migrate the existing email of several users to Google Apps for your domain. I can't do IMAP migration because we have Exchange 2000 on a Windows 2000 server. Exchange 2000 does not support IMAP (right?).

So, I have to do POP uploads. We have POP accounts for everyone, but they store very little of the mail that needs to be migrated. All the email is stored in Outlook and on the Exchange Server.



Given this, I think I have to:

1. Setup a POP server for Google's servers to download everything from:

I have a Linux server here that could host this temporarily, but have not setup a mail server before. What should I use? Postfix seems pretty standard as a Mail Transfer Agent. Should I be considering something else? Do I need an MTA, or can I get by with just a Mail Delivery Agent?

For a Mail Delivery Agent Cyrus seems to be overkill and unnecessarily complicated for this. Dovecot seems to be the simplest to setup according to my googling thus far. Courier also seems to be well-recommended.


2. Somehow get my email out of Microsoft format into the MDA:

This is what I'm most worried about. Googling suggests that importing into Thunderbird is the best way to do this since Thunderbird will convert the PST to mbox format (Thunderbird's native format).

After importing in Thunderbird I believe I can copy the appropriate mbox format into the user directories of the Mail Delivery Agent. Since both Dovecot & Courier support mbox, I should be okay. My initial impression is that mbox support will be easier in Dovecot.

After this, I use Google's fetch mail options to download everything!



Considering all this, does anyone have any advice on how to make this as painless on myself as possible? Any considerations or recommendations with respect to software? I think I'm going to try it with Dovecot & Thunderbird at the moment. Am I going to blow my brains out or is this going to work?

 

[timwhit]

I don't have any advice but sounds like a cool project. Please report back what you find out and how you end up doing it.

 

[Mercutio]

Exchange 2000 most certainly does support IMAP. I'm looking at System Manager on an Exchange 2000 server right now. You just need to go into Server > Server Name > Protocols > IMAP4 and turn it on, if it's not.

The quick way to transfer mail to Google Mail is to set your client up with IMAP connections to both your Exchange Server and to Gmail. With both sets of folders open, just drag and drop from one to the other. You can do this in basically any client that supports IMAP.

This is not terribly quick, but it *is* highly reliable. I've moved 2GB mail spools that way without losing any mail.

The other way you could do it is to configure your Exchange Server (assuming that it's exposed to the Internet) for POP3, and let Gmail's external mail checker grab the messages. I've done that too. It will grab about 1GB worth per day, so it might take a few days to fully populate on Google's servers.

 

[Mercutio]

Exchange 2000 most certainly does support IMAP. I'm looking at System Manager on an Exchange 2000 server right now. You just need to go into Server > Server Name > Protocols > IMAP4 and turn it on, if it's not.

The quick way to transfer mail to Google Mail is to set your client up with IMAP connections to both your Exchange Server and to Gmail. With both sets of folders open, just drag and drop from one to the other. You can do this in basically any client that supports IMAP.

This is not terribly quick, but it *is* highly reliable. I've moved 2GB mail spools that way without losing any mail.

The other way you could do it is to configure your Exchange Server (assuming that it's exposed to the Internet) for POP3, and let Gmail's external mail checker grab the messages. I've done that too. It will grab about 1GB worth per day, so it might take a few days to fully populate on Google's servers.

 

[Gilbo]

An additional question. POP doesn't support folders, so if I migrate using POP everyone will lose their folders correct?

To fix this I can:
1. Migrate using IMAP. We might need Google Apps Premium to do an IMAP migration.

2. Export PST files folder by folder, and apply labels by source POP account to recreate the folders on the server. I think Outlook allows exporting just a folder, so I think I can do this. It's more labour intensive though.



I just found the Google Email Uploader. For some reason this doesn't seem to very popular in the google results, but it looks like it might be a perfect solution. I'd still love to here anyone's comments on everything above though, if you got 'em.

 

[Mercutio]

One thing I really do not like about Gmail is the way its spam filtering works. Users have absolutely no control over it. I've had people lose real, important emails without ever knowing because it's basically invisible to end users.

 

[Mercutio]

How many users are we talking about, here?

 

[Gilbo]

Grrr! I need a Premier account again.

Can I subscribe for a free trial, upload everything, and then cancel? That seems too easy...

 

[Gilbo]

One thing I really do not like about Gmail is the way its spam filtering works. Users have absolutely no control over it. I've had people lose real, important emails without ever knowing because it's basically invisible to end users.

The SPAM mechanism in place here is already just like that. They have to go online to a special webmail folder. Since they can't access it from Outlook it may as well not exist. I don't think any setup would be convenient enough for the users here to actually use; they're highly non-technical. OTOH that's no reason not to set things up properly if there's a good system that's easy to administer (I'm not at all afraid of Linux, and very comfortable, but the fact is I haven't setup an MTA or MDA before - I have no problem learning if it's a better way though).

How many users are we talking about, here?

Just 7 people, including me.

I was considering setting up a real mail server, but I'm inclined to just dump everything on Google's servers and let them manage it.

The problem is that the Windows Server the office uses has become unstable and I'm having trouble figuring out the cause. I've wanted to migrate everything on it for months anyway. It's a bit of a crazy setup here; half a dozen different consultants over eight years all doing things differently. All shared folders are now on the Linux Server, and everything is much more reliable, faster, and easier to manage. At the moment it's not configured to be the Domain Controller, but in the end it will be.

Exchange isn't even used as a mail server at the moment. It's a glorified address book, and email backup archive. Everything is done through the ISP's POP accounts, configured individually on each machine's Outlook setup. Contacts are centrally managed in the Exchange Server, but nothing else is.

 

[Mercutio]

OK. You don't need a premier account. You just need to get IMAP working on the server you have. You can set up your existing mail clients to speak IMAP to Gmail, and IMAP to your Exchange server.

Exactly the same mail will be exposed through IMAP on Exchange as is exposed through its native protocol, and dragging and dropping is, well, dragging and dropping. For seven people, you can just walk up to each machine and do it. If it was dozens, yeah, get the premier account, but in this case you don't actually need it.

I don't recall having to do anything special to turn IMAP on with Exchange 2000. I really think it was on by default. If you want me to, I'll check. I still manage a live Exchange 2000 server.

 

[Gilbo]

OK. You don't need a premier account. You just need to get IMAP working on the server you have. You can set up your existing mail clients to speak IMAP to Gmail, and IMAP to your Exchange server.

...

I don't recall having to do anything special to turn IMAP on with Exchange 2000. I really think it was on by default. If you want me to, I'll check. I still manage a live Exchange 2000 server.

Thanks a lot Merc, I'll run a test as soon as I can - hopefully later today. Right now my boss' Blackberry went for a swim and I have to reset all the email & contacts stuff on the replacement...

 

[ddrueding]

I find GMail's spam filtering to be the best anywhere. The spam folder is visible from the main interface (even through IMAP!) and I get one spam a day, with one false-positive a month. I've migrated several clients to it (3-15 users) and they all love it. All we need now is an IMAP-like protocol for shared contacts and callendar information, and exchange will sink like a stone.

 

[Gilbo]

I find GMail's spam filtering to be the best anywhere. The spam folder is visible from the main interface (even through IMAP!) and I get one spam a day, with one false-positive a month. I've migrated several clients to it (3-15 users) and they all love it. All we need now is an IMAP-like protocol for shared contacts and callendar information, and exchange will sink like a stone.

Google Apps for Your Domain has contact sharing between domain users. I wish there was more granularity to it so you could have private & public contacts, but oh well.

With respect to your IMAP-like protocol. The KDE Personal Information Management program Kontact, which I use on Linux (and is awesome) allows contact sharing & syncing via the IMAP protocol. In a small office this works great. They basically just send vCards (a standard XML format for contact information) in IMAP messages to a central IMAP store from which everyone syncs. It can also be configured to connect to a Kolab server if you need something more like a full exchange setup.

Kontact will hopefully be updated to KDE 4 for the release of KDE 4.1, at the moment the stable version uses the 3.5.x libraries.

 

[ddrueding]

I have Google Apps for my domain, and I can't find where I would share my contacts.

Did you end up trying the Google Email Uploader?

 

[Gilbo]

I have Google Apps for my domain, and I can't find where I would share my contacts.

If you go to the administration page, hit the "User Accounts" tab, in User Accounts sub-tabs (don't know what else to call them) you have a choice between "Users" & "Settings", under "Settings" you should find the contact sharing options.

Did you end up trying the Google Email Uploader?

I didn't get to try it yesterday. IMAP wasn't sticking with the Blackberry I had to setup last afternoon; then it just fixes itself after it wasted 2 hours of my day ... Gonna try it today sometime.

 

[ddrueding]

If you go to the administration page, hit the "User Accounts" tab, in User Accounts sub-tabs (don't know what else to call them) you have a choice between "Users" & "Settings", under "Settings" you should find the contact sharing options.

Found it. Thanks. Shame there aren't any settings for it, just on or off.