This article is a guide on how a tenant migration service moves Office 365 tenants. IT departments face a lot of challenges when transitioning to the cloud. And for tenant administrators, the task of moving to Office 365 is even more daunting. Tenant administrators take care of a lot of things, from user management and reporting to security and licensing.
The process of migrating to Office 365 involves a lot of work, and it’s important that the job is done correctly. That’s where a tenant migration service comes in. Migrating between tenants using Office 365 can be complicated. However, it also has two main stages: the preparation stage and the migration process.
Pre Migration Steps
Preparing for the migration is a multi-step process. These preparatory steps will help you achieve a plethora of benefits resulting in a smooth migration. Here are the steps of preparation involved.
1. Preparing the domain
- One of the most important considerations before switching to Office 365 is enough space. Migration of data from an on-premises solution will take up space, and you may need more licenses to make room. The source and target tenants will need to create administrator accounts for the migration process. The tool itself will also need administrator accounts created.
- You also need to create user mailboxes, resource mailboxes, and distribution groups. They are all necessary if you want to successfully migrate your email from your old email system. You might need to consolidate your Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) at times. The next step is synchronizing the source and target domain. The last step in the domain preparation stage is to go over how to use Office 365 after the migration.
2. Domain verification
First, verify the target tenant domain in Office 365. In order to set up the Office 365 admin with a domain name, you need to create a TXT record in DNS and add a domain name to the admin center. To avoid a failed verification process, you should make sure that a domain is not in use for anything but your target tenant. The process should take around three days to take effect.
3. Schedule the migration
To get started, generate a list of user mailboxes for migration and create a CSV file mapping these mailboxes to Office 365. If you have a mail server, you need to set up an MX record. The primary email domain’s lowest TTL is the one that will apply to all your email domains. The next step is to disable the directory sync for the source tenant.
4. Carrying out the migration
If you want to stop all of the mail coming to your source tenant, change the MX records to an unreachable value. It’s as simple as noting the lowest TTL on the MX record. In order to maintain a smooth transition, delete all of the objects from the primary mailbox in the source tenant before transferring the Office 365 mailbox.
The last step of the process is to verify that your target domain is a match for your source tenant. This is a good time to wait an hour, after the previous steps have been performed. If you’re using Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), you need to set up a new domain in your target tenant to get it going. Activate your new users by assigning them licenses in your domain. The main email address for new users should be from the same domain. Sending the passwords along is also important.
The pre-migration process is complete. Now you have the option to migrate using PowerShell scripts or a third-party migration tool.
The Migration Process
You have 2 different methods for migration depending on the number of users.
Less than 500 users: The amount of data that can be migrated is not limitless. One option to reduce the volume of data is a cut-off date. For example, one could set a cut-off date of six months to migrate mail, calendar data, and contact information.
More than 500 users: The IT admin team can take a multi-pass approach to these migrations. It can start by migrating key information such as calendars, emails, and contacts for one week while the other data is migrated in the background. Users can then switch to the new domain while continuing to use the old domain.
Wrapping Up
Your Office 365 workspace is your online office. You store all your important files, emails, and contacts on this online office. Organizations, with so many mergers and acquisitions, cannot afford to lose the customer data. This is where the Office 365 tenant to replace migration comes into play. It lets customers continue using their accounts after a change in the company’s constitution.
If you are not careful, you can lose everything that you have stored in your Office 365 tenant. This is why it is very important that you hire a tenant migration service to move your Office 365 tenant.