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On-Premise to Exchange Online Migration – Detailed Explanation

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Published By Ashwani Tiwari
Aswin Vijayan
Approved By Aswin Vijayan
Published On May 20th, 2022
Reading Time 8 Minutes Reading

Want to migrate On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online? Are you facing difficulties in finding the procedure for switching your Exchange Server mailboxes? Well, you are searching at the right place. But first take a look at the takeaway through this informative blog.

Via this article you will be able to review the most effective method and practice which will be beneficial for the desired mailbox migration result. Also, it will somewhere help you in deciding the best option as per your organization needs to migrate On-Premise Mailboxes into Exchange Online.

Topics Covered in the Post

Generally, there are two methods for On-Premise mailbox into Exchange Online migration procedure. One is by migrating the mailboxes to PST and then import files to Office 365. This approach is recommended when you have a smaller number of user mailboxes. Second one is highly preferred for large organizations, having large number of user mailboxes, by On-Premise Server to Exchange Online directly.

When we talk about cloud-based emailing platform, it is hard not to talk about Microsoft’s Office 365. They started providing this technology in June 2011 and ever since there is no looking back. Since then, many leading organizations, which used to work on-premises emails, feel the need to switch into new cloud-based tech. Migrating these on-premises mail requires a skill set and ample of time, then how come these organizations decided to take this leap? Was there any actual benefit attach to it? Or it was just a same thing? Let discuss this!

Why Do You Need to Migrate On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online?

Organizations which are using Exchange set up on their premises, state that it is because of the primary reason of gaining the universal access of the hardware and the ability to control entire Exchange data. But, this on-premises setup can also be responsible for disasters, putting significant data at risk. Moreover, in some cases, the cost of maintaining these servers can be challenging and a bigger task is of providing the availability of servers with 100% efficiency.

This is where migrating On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online offers more significant advantages than on-premises setup.

  • Office 365 provides a completely scalable service. This means the user is only asked to purchase more new user accounts, and the entire procedure of buying storage and additional hardware setups or even their configuration is completely eliminated.
  • It offers cost-effective services. Office 365 only asks to invest in Office 365 subscription and provides you all the features in its package. There is no need for maintaining any on-premises setup or anything else anymore.
  • Microsoft takes full responsibility for your data security. User does not have to worry about the loss of data due to any disaster, technical faults or even data theft anymore. The Microsoft experts understand the importance of the user’s crucial data.
  • Office 365 offers automatic up-gradation of the latest software versions via a very seamless technique. The user does not have to go through many troublesome situations like server downtime or constant worry of software updates etc. anymore. It automatically takes care of everything .

Issues Faced While Migration On-Premise Mailbox to Exchange Online

As we have noted, migration of On-Premise data is very risky and requires expert supervision and attention to be successful. Many things may not work. So please give it a try only if you are sure what and how to do it. Otherwise, you may face one of the following problems

  • On-Premise Exchange downtime during the migration process
  • Stability Issues in the current Exchange Server
  • Slow Network Connections resulting in time wastage
  • Incorrectly configured CAS server, firewalls and proxy devices
  • Various security guidelines and policies of organizations hampering the migration process
  • Users running the older version of Microsoft Outlook
  • Policy Compliance Issues

All the aforementioned issues are a small part of On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online migration. Completing the entire task successfully without any error that too in one go looks like an impossible task looking at its complications. It requires proper planning, execution, expertise, in-depth knowledge and a lot of patience.

Perfect Option to Migrate On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online

If you are looking to carry out the migration process in a smooth way and don’t want any complexities during the task, then you must consider using Exchange 2013 to Office 365 Migration Tool. This is a reliable and secure application to make the entire process quick and hassle-free. Users can easily export emails, calendars, and contacts to the destination account without losing any bit of data.

It offers a wide range of products such as the tool that makes sure that the data integrity is maintained throughout the process. Moreover, the folder structure of the source mailbox is kept intact, and users get the folders in the same order in the destination account. Let us have a look at some of its unique set of features:

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  • Complete On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online Migration.
  • The software does not Impose any Mailbox Size Limitations.
  • Option to Maintain Original Folder Structure at Destination Account.
  • You can Prioritize Mailbox Migration According to Requirements.

Step by Step Exchange On-Premise to Exchange Online Migration

1. Install & Launch On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online Migrator.

2. Select Exchange & Office 365 as Source and Destination Platforms.

3. Enter Admin Credentials and Map Users of Source & Destination Accounts.

4. Click in Start Migration button to Initiate the Migration Process.

Verified Customer Testimonials

“This is the best software when it comes to migrate On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online without any data loss. The third-party utility makes sure that all the mailbox items supported by this software are migrated to destination account without making any changes to the data. All the emails are transferred into Exchange Online with exact meta properties as they were in the source account.”

“I will highly recommend this software to everyone who is looking to migrate On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online. I am Exchange Admin in my organization and handle Microsoft Exchange 2013 to store all the mailbox data. But, in January 2020, we used this application to migrate around 3500 mailboxes into Exchange Online and this tool made our task simple and quick.”

Manual Solutions to Migrate On-Premise Mailbox to Exchange Online

There are several ways using which users can move their On-Premise Exchange mailboxes. All these procedures have their own limitations and some conditions under which they are useful. Users can choose any of these methods which best fits their requirements.

1. Migrate Mailboxes Directly into Exchange Online

  • Staged Migration – This method is useful in scenarios where the organization wants to migrate more than 2000 mailboxes at once. However, this process only supports Exchange 2003, 2007. To know more about the process, Click Here.
  • Cutover Migration – If the organization is looking forward to migrating up to 2000 mailboxes, then they can consider cutover migration. This solution can be implemented on Microsoft Exchange 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003. Click Here to know more.
  • Hybrid Migration – This procedure is best suited if the organization is having 150-2000 mailboxes and they want to move them over a period of time. It can be implemented on Exchange 2010, 2013 and 2016. To know more, Click Here.

2. Migrate On-Premise Exchange Server to Exchange Online via PST

Users can also export their crucial data with the help of an Outlook PST file. If users are using Exchange 2007 or earlier versions, then they can use the ExMerge utility or export-mailbox command to export On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online. However, if the users have Exchange 2010 or later versions, then they can take the help of new-mailboxexportrequest PowerShell command for the same to import Outlook data file to Office 365.

Limitations Associated with Manual Methods

  1. The manual procedures to export On-Premise mailbox into Exchange Online are too lengthy and complex.
  2. These methods require a lot of technical knowledge and larger downtime.
  3. There are situations when users can’t find their important data in the destination account as it might lose during the process.
  4. Every method is version dependent and you must select the method depending on the number of mailboxes that you want to export.

Conclusion

On-Premise Exchange to Exchange Online migration process is such a crucial task for an organization and must be carried out in a proper way. So, any type of data loss or migration issue can create a lot of problems and cost a lot for the organization. Thus, in this article, we have mentioned all the issues and solutions using which users can carry out the process without losing any data. We suggest users to go for the third-party application to make the task in a smooth way.

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