Cutover Process to Migrate Exchange 2000,2003,2007,2010,2013,2016 to Office 365 – Guide

Tej Pratap Shukla | July 10th, 2017 | Exchange Server, General Info

With the introduction to Office 365, Microsoft has moved to providing a platform to communicate via Cloud Environment. They encourage companies to move their mailboxes from Exchange to Office 365 Cloud Exchange. Many however stall the entire process as it needs careful planning to move multiple accounts at a time. It should be taken lightly as transferring an established communication system to another is not an easy task. It involves many processes and is a huge undertaking. Many day-to-day activities may be affected and communication halted for some time. There are multiple ways to migrate Exchange 2000,2003,2007,2010,2013,2016 to Office 365. Some of them have been discussed in this post.

Exchange 2000,2003,2007,2010,2013,2016 to Office 365 – Migration Guide

Administrators can migrate mailboxes to Office 365. And users can access their emails from a mailbox created for them. Admins must be fully aware of the task they are going to perform. Learn about its effects, limitations and plan the transition accordingly. There are different steps to migrate Exchange 2000,2003,2007,2010,2013,2016 to Office 365. For moving existing on-premise Exchange Server environment to Office 365 follow the steps below.

Solution#1 Cutover Migration

This is part of the Office 365 deployment procedure to migrate mailbox contents of a workplace. Perform this operation if the establishment is running on Exchange 2013 and below. It is only applicable for small businesses with two thousand and lesser mailboxes. Follow the steps below to start the process of deployment.

Step 1: Planning

Before beginning the transition, proper planning needs to be put into action. Administrators need to be fully aware of the delay in email routing it will create. Before migration, admins need to make sure that the company domain is recognized by the Exchange online. And after the transfer, each user will need a proper activation key to access their Office 365 mailbox. Here is the guide to perform migration of Exchange 2000,2003,2007,2010,2013,2016 to Office 365.

Firstly, open the Exchange Deployment Assist Site.
After that, click Cloud Only.
Now, a series of questions will be asked by the site. Answer them all correctly to move to the next step.
Next, click on the next ’ → ‘ arrow.
Following that, Microsoft will generate a step by step guide to performing the cutover migration. Read them properly to understand what is the process all about.

Step 2: Preparation

Before starting the cutover migration process, there are a few essential activities that need to be completed. They are:

Firstly, Outlook Anywhere needs to be configured on the on-premise server computer. This is used to connect the workplace system with Exchange server. It is also called RPC over HTTP.
Next, use the Microsoft Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer to verify the connectivity between Exchange organization and Outlook Anywhere.
Now, to start the verification process open the link Remote Connectivity Analyzer.
After that, select Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) test.
Then, click Next.
Now, enter all the details correctly.
Following that, verify the code and click Perform Test. This will start the connectivity test.
Later, after the test is complete, move to the next step. If there are warning indicated, look into them and make changes to the organization Exchange server.

Step 3: Migration Process

After planning and preparing, follow the steps below to perform the cutover migration Office 365
At first, login to the Office 365 account.Now, go to the Domains page.
Next, click Add a Domain and enter details of the on-premise organization domain.
Then, choose Next.
Following that, verify the domain and finish the wizard.
Now, open the Exchange Admin Center.
Next, click Migration.
After that, click the ‘+’ sign. And then, choose Migrate to Exchange Online.
From this, choose cutover migration and click Next
Then, enter the essential organization server account credentials and click Next.
In this, enter the Exchange server name and the RPC Proxy Server and click Next
And then, type in a new name for the migration process. Then, click Next.
Having done that, select a user to whom the process details will be sent.
Now, choose to start the migration now or later. Choose now to start the process immediately thereafter.
Finally, the transfer process will begin and mailboxes will start to sync one at a time.

Solution#2 Using A Third-Party Tool

The transition process can be a lot even for someone with ample knowledge about deployment rules and Exchange Server administration terms. Often admins look for a workaround to performing the Office 365 migration steps in such a long and lengthy way. Also, a lot of time can be taken up if there are more than 500 mailboxes. There are communication lags as each mailbox data may be more than 5-10GB. Hence, alternative tools are used by data center team that make the entire process more easier and professional. Exchange to Office 365 migration tool is a simple application that refines the entire process and makes the transition much faster.

Wrapping It Up

Cloud services are the latest and advanced technology to save mailbox data in a remote location. It is a secure way to data storage which is adopted by many small and large businesses. Communication is also moving to Cloud platforms with Office 365. The manual way to migrate Exchange 2000,2003,2007,2010,2013,2016 to Office 365 has been discussed in this post. There are lots of alternative solutions available in the market. There make the manual solution look irrelevant and tiresome. Many opt for efficient and reliable tools like Exchange to Office 365.