March 11, 2019 at 13:49Migrate to Zimbra without risking business with a common domain
Earlier we talked about how you can migrate from IBM Notes / Domino to Zimbra. The option outlined by us is ideal for small enterprises with a small number of employees. But what about large enterprises with hundreds of employees, where a sharp transition to a new mail system is guaranteed to lead to collapse and create unprecedented risks for the business? Is it possible to organize a phased transition to Zimbra in this case?
As is the case with our past example, a phased transition will be achieved by deploying two mail systems on one domain at once. The main difference will be that this time the Zimbra Collaboration Suite will be used as the main mail system. One of its tasks will be to forward letters to the server from IBM Notes / Domino if their recipients have not migrated to Zimbra yet. As a result, we need to come to a scenario in which a message coming from an external network went to the Zimbra MTA, and then it was forwarded to the mail system on which the addressee account is currently located.
So, within the framework of the existing infrastructure, we have IBM Notes / Domino running on the mail.company.ru domain and Zimbra Collaboration Suite located on the zimbra.company.ru domain. In order for Zimbra to fully play the role of the primary server, namely to receive mail and redirect it to Domino, it is necessary that accounts for all email users be created on the Zimbra server. If instead resort to the use of global rules, as was the case in our previous article, then all emails that do not have addresses on the server with Zimbra will be redirected to the server with Domino. This is fraught with the fact that upon receipt of a letter addressed to a non-existent user, the so-called “mail loop” will appear.
In the event that your company uses AD to manage accounts, then no problems should arise when creating accounts in Zimbra. In the same case, if all accounts are created and stored in IBM Notes / Domino, you can avoid manual tedious manual transfer of accounts using the built-in Domino function to export the list of accounts to a .csv file. After this is done, you need to run the Bulk Provisioning Wizard , which can simultaneously create up to 500 accounts based on data from a .csv file.
After all the accounts on the server with Zimbra have been created, it is necessary for each of those who will be on the server with Domino to register routing using a command of the formzmprov ma user@company.ru zimbraMailTransport smtp: mail.company.ru: 25 , where instead of user@company.ru it is necessary to substitute accounts that "live" on the server with Domino. In principle, having a .csv file with a list of accounts extracted from Domino on hand, you can automate this process using a script.
After that, it remains only to configure your MX-record so that all incoming letters are first sent to the Zimbra MTA, where they would be sorted. This completes the configuration of the common domain for Zimbra and IBM Notes / Domino. After that, you can begin to transfer the contents of mailboxes and account data from one system to another. This is done using the ZCS Migration Wizard for Lotus Domino program and the instructions in one of our previous articles .
Note that after the migration of any account from IBM Notes / Domino to Zimbra is completed, it is necessary to disable the forced routing of letters that we configured for it earlier. This is done using the command zmprov ma user@company.ru zimbraMailTransport lmtp: zimbra.company.ru: 7025 . Thus, after all users migrate to Zimbra, mail will cease to be redirected to the server from Domino altogether, which means that it can be disabled and completely switched to using Zimbra.
This migration option is universal and can be used for migration from any mail system to Zimbra. In particular, it can be used when switching from using MS Exchange to Zimbra, if we described in a previous articlefor some reason the instruction does not suit you.
For all questions related to the Zextras Suite, you can contact the representative of Zextras Katerina Triandafilidi by e-mail katerina@zextras.com
As is the case with our past example, a phased transition will be achieved by deploying two mail systems on one domain at once. The main difference will be that this time the Zimbra Collaboration Suite will be used as the main mail system. One of its tasks will be to forward letters to the server from IBM Notes / Domino if their recipients have not migrated to Zimbra yet. As a result, we need to come to a scenario in which a message coming from an external network went to the Zimbra MTA, and then it was forwarded to the mail system on which the addressee account is currently located.
So, within the framework of the existing infrastructure, we have IBM Notes / Domino running on the mail.company.ru domain and Zimbra Collaboration Suite located on the zimbra.company.ru domain. In order for Zimbra to fully play the role of the primary server, namely to receive mail and redirect it to Domino, it is necessary that accounts for all email users be created on the Zimbra server. If instead resort to the use of global rules, as was the case in our previous article, then all emails that do not have addresses on the server with Zimbra will be redirected to the server with Domino. This is fraught with the fact that upon receipt of a letter addressed to a non-existent user, the so-called “mail loop” will appear.
In the event that your company uses AD to manage accounts, then no problems should arise when creating accounts in Zimbra. In the same case, if all accounts are created and stored in IBM Notes / Domino, you can avoid manual tedious manual transfer of accounts using the built-in Domino function to export the list of accounts to a .csv file. After this is done, you need to run the Bulk Provisioning Wizard , which can simultaneously create up to 500 accounts based on data from a .csv file.
After all the accounts on the server with Zimbra have been created, it is necessary for each of those who will be on the server with Domino to register routing using a command of the formzmprov ma user@company.ru zimbraMailTransport smtp: mail.company.ru: 25 , where instead of user@company.ru it is necessary to substitute accounts that "live" on the server with Domino. In principle, having a .csv file with a list of accounts extracted from Domino on hand, you can automate this process using a script.
After that, it remains only to configure your MX-record so that all incoming letters are first sent to the Zimbra MTA, where they would be sorted. This completes the configuration of the common domain for Zimbra and IBM Notes / Domino. After that, you can begin to transfer the contents of mailboxes and account data from one system to another. This is done using the ZCS Migration Wizard for Lotus Domino program and the instructions in one of our previous articles .
Note that after the migration of any account from IBM Notes / Domino to Zimbra is completed, it is necessary to disable the forced routing of letters that we configured for it earlier. This is done using the command zmprov ma user@company.ru zimbraMailTransport lmtp: zimbra.company.ru: 7025 . Thus, after all users migrate to Zimbra, mail will cease to be redirected to the server from Domino altogether, which means that it can be disabled and completely switched to using Zimbra.
This migration option is universal and can be used for migration from any mail system to Zimbra. In particular, it can be used when switching from using MS Exchange to Zimbra, if we described in a previous articlefor some reason the instruction does not suit you.
For all questions related to the Zextras Suite, you can contact the representative of Zextras Katerina Triandafilidi by e-mail katerina@zextras.com