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List:       ngw
Subject:    RE: [ngw] Migration
From:       "Joe Pampel" <joe () ardsley ! com>
Date:       2006-12-28 21:33:26
Message-ID: CAC84D0BB857074591DB144EDFFD008A2F39 () ex2k3 ! mscsardsley ! com
[Download RAW message or body]

fwiw - hope you don't need to do this. I just went through it, so I can
definitely relate. The fear, the loathing, the whole enchilada. Just
wait until your users start complaining about the completely crappy
search or name completion in the client.. or other 'features'. I am
blown away by how bad name completion is in OL2k3 architecturally. For
users who are used to it working in some sensible way, there will be
screaming.  Rather than use your address book, it builds a local index
file on the PC which is populated as you start sending mail to people.
If you fat finger an address, you have to blow away the whole index file
and start *over*.  Probably an artifact of OL being written by the
Office team and not the Exchange team.. Compared to GW's simple &
brilliant use of your central address book, it is a painfully stupid
"solution". In GW if you have a bad address completing, you can clean it
up in a minute and not impact the completion of anything else. In OL you
get to populate the index on all of your various office PC's, home PC,
laptop, etc. These are the kinds of things that drive people crazy.
Imagine having each one of the PC's you use potentially behave
differently for name completion. Then imagine the calls you're going to
get about it. This is progress?
 
Also, if your folks use search at all to find old mail, keep in mind
that full text indexing is OFF by default in Exchange due to it being a
resource hog. As we burn our system in I am going to go from weekly
indexing to daily and see how close I can get to the 4 hours I used with
GW. GW search just plain rocks. EX does not 'rock' here. Not at all. It
has never even heard of rocking.. 
 
As a "plus", for Exch you will need to have an AD domain up and running.
(min of 2 domain controllers doing nothing but) Just to install or
manage an exchange system you need a workstation in the domain.  OWA (if
you use it) will really need a dedicated box (it's a resource hog)  btw
The DOD has recently banned the use of OWA and HTML mail. see here:
http://www.fcw.com/article97178-12-22-06-Web  show that to mgmt! Also
factor in the mandatory use of a VPN to run the Outlook client remotely
(or Citrix). The hits just keep coming. 
 
My first day in production (12/18) I got e-mail from a colleague who has
a friend at Citigroup. The exchange system they used was down hard and
they were on 'dialtone backup' which in exchange speak means you can
send and receive e-mail but the database as you knew it is baked unless
you have a good tape somewhere. No calendar, no contacts, no mail. So
for all the msft fan-boys who tell you that jet database corruption just
doesn't happen anymore, they are on drugs. It can & does happen even to
folks with exchange *teams* and big budgets. Budget for some kind of HA
solution or at least lobby for it so if bad things happen your rear is
covered. We went with NeverFail fwiw. Can't comment on it yet bc we're
about 2 weeks away from having it in production. On paper it looks
great, except that like everything else in msft world it is more money
we could have spent on something else.. I would not use MSFT clustering
unless someone put a large caliber revolver to my temple. Compared to
solutions like NeverFail or Doubletake, it is clearly the weaker
solution. btw the biggest msft cluster for exchange is up to 8 nodes
now, and one *must* be passive. Who knows.. in another 4 years they may
catch NW 5.1..
 
If you have no choice (I didn't) and have to move, I would recommend
using what we used - the migrator tool from Quest Software. I think it
*was* the wingra tool? I forget. {Quest bought someone else's tool}.
Wherever they got it, it works & works great. It installs as a trusted
app (so someone knew GroupWise..) , we got better than 5 GB/hour
transfer rates on a GB switched segment and it allows you to do
incrementals so you can do a 'pre-migration' during production hours and
then do a diff right before the cut over. (what we did) It also allows
for system coexistence (although I did not use this feature). You can
choose what to bring over which is a big help if you have a mixed
environment. I had folks with everything in GW, or mail in GW but
calendar in Lotus Organizer, or everything in Outlook or.. any
combination. We did not dupe anything since we could set policy per user
when needed. (actually we duped a little bit of mail on one day due to
taking differential migrations. A small price to pay though) We had no
abends, no lost messages or anything. (yet anyhow) It made an otherwise
painful process much smoother and faster than I ever anticipated. It
does nothing about the ugly feeling in the pit of your stomach that
you've sold your soul however. I am still looking for that software...
:(
 
Other piece of advice: if you use Zen, download the Office resource kit
from msft (ORK). There is a wizard in that which walks you through
creating profiles and MST files so you can push the MSI out with Zen.
Hopefully you will never need to, but keep it in your back pocket..
 
Good luck.
 
- Joe P 
 
 
________________________________

From: Gert [mailto:gwcheck@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 7:05 AM
To: ngw@ngwlist.com
Subject: Re: [ngw] Migration


 
arent you iinterested in reasons not to migrate to exchange?
check out the links on GWCheck.com in the EXCHANGE MIGRATE menu
 
for migrating : wingra.com did it for me once...
check also http://www.slipstick.com/config/convmsg.htm
 
Gert

GWCheck.com - GWCheck.Info
GroupWise Info for the Open Community

http://blog.gwcheck.com
http://search.gwcheck.com 
http://tools.gwcheck.com >
 
On 12/26/06, Wally Eisenhart <eisenwal@pentamation.com> wrote: 

	We might be moving towards to Microsoft Exchange 2003 (I hope
not, but
	Corporate might force this) but we need to look at migration
tools that 
	does Mail, Cal/appoints, and most of all Archives (which are on
another
	server)  This is a sad day for us, so any information would be
	helpful...
	
	Regards,
	
	
	
	
	
	
	Wally Eisenhart    |    Network Administrator    |    SunGard 
	Pentamation    |    610-691-3616
	
	
	
	
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<BODY>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>fwiw - hope you don't need to do this. I just went through 
it, so I can definitely relate. The fear, the loathing, the whole enchilada. 
Just wait until your users start complaining about the completely crappy search 
or name completion in the client.. or other 'features'.&nbsp;I am blown away by 
how bad name completion is in OL2k3 architecturally. For users who are used to 
it working in some sensible way, there will be screaming.&nbsp; Rather than use 
your address book, it builds a local index file on the PC which is populated as 
you start sending mail to people. If you fat finger an address, you have to blow 
away the whole index file and start *over*.&nbsp; Probably an artifact of OL 
being written by the Office team and not the Exchange team.. Compared to GW's 
simple &amp; brilliant use of your central address book, it is a painfully 
stupid "solution". In GW if you have a bad address completing, you can clean it 
up in a minute and not impact the completion of anything else. In OL you get to 
populate the index on all of your various office PC's, home PC, laptop, etc. 
These are the kinds of things that drive people crazy. Imagine having each one 
of the PC's you use potentially behave differently for name completion. Then 
imagine the calls you're going to get about it. This is 
progress?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>Also, if your folks use search at all to find old mail, 
keep in mind that full text indexing is OFF by default in Exchange due to it 
being a resource hog. As we burn our system in I am going to go from weekly 
indexing to daily and see how close I can get to the 4 hours I used with GW. GW 
search just plain rocks. EX does not 'rock' here. Not at all. It has never even 
heard of rocking.. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>As a "plus", for Exch you will need to have an AD domain up 
and running. (min of 2 domain controllers doing nothing but) Just to install or 
manage an exchange system you need a workstation in the domain. &nbsp;OWA (if 
you use it) will really need a dedicated box (it's a resource hog)&nbsp; btw The 
DOD has recently banned the use of OWA and HTML mail. see here:&nbsp; <A 
href="http://www.fcw.com/article97178-12-22-06-Web">http://www.fcw.com/article97178-12-22-06-Web</A>&nbsp; \
 show that to mgmt! Also factor in the mandatory use of a VPN to run the Outlook 
client remotely (or Citrix). The hits just keep coming. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>My first day in production (12/18) I got e-mail from a 
colleague who has a friend at Citigroup. The exchange system they used was down 
hard and they were on 'dialtone backup' which in exchange speak means you can 
send and receive e-mail but the database as you knew it is baked unless you have 
a good tape somewhere. No calendar, no contacts, no mail. So for all the msft 
fan-boys who tell you that jet database corruption just doesn't happen anymore, 
they are on drugs. It can &amp; does happen even to folks with exchange *teams* 
and big budgets. </FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>Budget for some kind of HA solution or at least lobby for 
it so if bad things happen your rear is covered. We went with NeverFail fwiw. 
Can't comment on it yet bc we're about 2 weeks away from having it in 
production. On paper it looks great, except that like everything else in msft 
world it is more money we could have spent on something else.. I would not use 
MSFT clustering unless someone put a large caliber revolver to my temple. 
Compared to solutions like NeverFail or&nbsp;Doubletake, it is clearly the 
weaker solution. btw the biggest msft cluster for exchange is up to 8 nodes now, 
and one *must* be passive. Who knows.. in another 4 years they may catch NW 
5.1..</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>If you have no choice (I didn't) and have to move, I would 
recommend using what we used -&nbsp;the migrator tool from Quest Software. I 
think it *was* the wingra tool? I forget. {Quest bought someone else's tool}. 
Wherever they got it, it works &amp; works great. It installs as a trusted app 
(so someone knew GroupWise..) , we got better than 5 GB/hour transfer rates on a 
GB switched segment and it allows you to do incrementals so you can do a 
'pre-migration' during production hours and then do a diff right before the cut 
over. (what we did) It also allows for system coexistence (although I did not 
use this feature). You can choose what to bring over which is a big help if you 
have a mixed environment. I had folks with everything in GW, or mail in GW but 
calendar in Lotus Organizer, or everything in Outlook or.. any combination. We 
did not dupe anything since we could set policy per user when needed. (actually 
we duped a little bit of mail on one day due to taking differential migrations. 
A small price to pay though) </FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT 
face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>We had no abends, no lost messages or anything. 
(yet anyhow) It made an otherwise painful process much smoother and faster than 
I ever anticipated. It does nothing about the ugly feeling in the pit of your 
stomach that you've sold your soul however. I am&nbsp;still looking for that 
software...&nbsp;:(</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006>&nbsp;</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2>Other piece of advice: if you use Zen, download the Office 
resource kit from msft (ORK). There is a wizard in that which walks you through 
creating profiles and MST files so you can push the MSI out with Zen. Hopefully 
you will never need to, but keep it in your back pocket..</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial 
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><SPAN 
class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Good 
luck.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><SPAN 
class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff 
size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><SPAN 
class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>- Joe 
P</FONT>&nbsp;</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><SPAN 
class=140194220-28122006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff 
size=2></FONT></SPAN>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><SPAN 
class=140194220-28122006>&nbsp;</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
</DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma 
size=2><B>From:</B> Gert [mailto:gwcheck@gmail.com] <BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, 
December 27, 2006 7:05 AM<BR><B>To:</B> ngw@ngwlist.com<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: 
[ngw] Migration<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>arent you iinterested in reasons not to migrate to exchange?</DIV>
<DIV>check out the links on GWCheck.com in the EXCHANGE MIGRATE menu</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>for migrating : <A href="http://wingra.com">wingra.com</A> did it for me 
once...</DIV>
<DIV>check also <A 
href="http://www.slipstick.com/config/convmsg.htm">http://www.slipstick.com/config/convmsg.htm</A><BR>&nbsp;</DIV>
 <DIV>Gert<BR><BR>GWCheck.com - GWCheck.Info<BR>GroupWise Info for the Open 
Community<BR><BR><A 
href="http://blog.gwcheck.com">http://blog.gwcheck.com</A><BR><A 
href="http://search.gwcheck.com">http://search.gwcheck.com</A> <BR><A 
href="http://tools.gwcheck.com">http://tools.gwcheck.com</A> 
&gt;<BR>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=gmail_quote>On 12/26/06, <B class=gmail_sendername>Wally 
Eisenhart</B> &lt;<A 
href="mailto:eisenwal@pentamation.com">eisenwal@pentamation.com</A>&gt; 
wrote:</SPAN> 
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote 
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">We 
  might be moving towards to Microsoft Exchange 2003 (I hope not, 
  but<BR>Corporate might force this) but we need to look at migration tools that 
  <BR>does Mail, Cal/appoints, and most of all Archives (which are on 
  another<BR>server)&nbsp;&nbsp;This is a sad day for us, so any information 
  would be<BR>helpful...<BR><BR>Regards,<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Wally 
  Eisenhart&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Network 
  Administrator&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SunGard 
  <BR>Pentamation&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;610-691-3616<BR><BR> \
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