Migrating from CMGPro (CommunigatePro)

[davidfsmith]

Right,

The time has come and this weekend I'm moving 295 email accounts and 53 email groups from CommunigatePro to Zimbra, and although I know there will be a real slog involved (my users don't tend to delete email, ever) I'm actually excited about what Zimbra will mean for me and for my company moving forward.

I've got my spreadsheets of users / passwords built
I've got the mail server updated with the relevant RHEL libraries I need
I've got IMAPsync installed on the server
I've got a fridge full of red bull for the weekend
I've got 2 x 1Tb USB drives for backing up the mail to prior to the move
I've even got a plan...

Due to the fact the existing mail server is less than 12 months old, there is no new mail server, CommunigatePro and Zimbra will (hopefully) for a time be running on the same server, CMGPro will be running on user configured ports and Zimbra on default ports, IMAPsync will then be used to copy the data across from the old "server" to the new.

So Thursday night this week, CMGPro will be offline while all the Accounts data files are copied to the 2 x 1Tb USB drives, one will then be kept secure, the other will then be used as the data store throughout Friday, then over the weekend the migration proper will take place. All email will be migrated using IMAPsync, and for the 30 / 40 users who use the MAPI functionality their non-email data will be migrated manually (after all no point in having two assistants and not wrecking their weekend by having them work with me)

Will post up how it goes.....

(Wish me luck)

BTW - the reasons for the move ? Simple Stalker seemingly has no intention for providing MAPI support / hack for OSX users, the PC MAPI connector has rubbish performance over WAN, and there was no way I was going to move to exchange and run my mail server on the Windows platform, that just feels wrong, and I suspect stress and (admin) death lie down the MS mail server path...

Finally, went out with a couple of the Zimbra guys in SF, and they brought me beer / burger and a nice sleeved top, I *am* that cheap!!!

;-)

[phoenix]

Good luck with the move, it will be interesting to hear how the move goes.

[tyco]

Did exaclty the same thing, had exactly the same situation with stalker.

i liked Communigate a lot but beeing a mailserver only with no isync mapi integration for mac - could not believe it. they even promised entourage integration 3 years ago, nothing till now. flash web client yes you wish

things i still like on stalker communigate what zimbra is missing:

1. mailbox sharing with acls. amazing i miss this the most. guys please vote here

2. direct mailbox access via mta. sending an email to archive#user@mydomain.com will put the email directy in the mailbox archive of user@mydomain.com

3. i am wondering how you are doing mailing lists in zimbra. distribution lists are not exacty the same.

otherwise my migration went nice. be user you use the newest imapsync version.

gogo zimbra

[davidfsmith]

1. mailbox sharing with acls. amazing i miss this the most. guys please vote here

Voted on that, as I know we'll be needing that one!!

;-)

We're ditching CMGPro after the promises of entourage support came to nothing, and we use Avaya for IP so don't need the SIP functionality that Stalker seem to be concentrating all their efforts on now.

Just chilling with a bottle of wine at home now, before spending the weekend in the office migrating 500+Gb of data, 300+ user accounts....

[davidfsmith]

Migration is progressing (with a bit of help from Zimbra)

IMAPSync is taking forever so at the moment it is just doing people's inbox, once completed I'll run it again to do all the other folders that people have (largest account is 17Gb!)

Had a few issues with the migration script, but nothing that a bit of bash hacking couldn't get around... the batch processing exampe in the wiki has a typo where it has

"$p1"--host2

it should be:

"$p1" --host2

no exactly a huge issue, but a pain...

Gave up trying to use imapsyncbatch as it just barfed on line 68 and I don't know enough bash to fix it.

For the migration I'm doing my imapsync line in the batch file became

/root/imapsync $1 --nosyncacls --syncinternaldates --folder "INBOX" --host1 $host1 --port1 144 --user1 "$user" --password1 "$p1" --host2 $host2 --user2 "$user" --password2 "$p1" --authmech2=PLAIN --ssl2

Once this is completed I intend to run it again but using

/root/imapsync $1 --nosyncacls --syncinternaldates --exclude "#KnownSpam" --exclude "#FalsePositives" --exclude "Trash" --exclude "Deleted Items" --exclude "Deleted Messages" --exclude "Deleted" --host1 $host1 --port1 144 --user1 "$user" --password1 "$p1" --host2 $host2 --user2 "$user" --password2 "$p1" --authmech2=PLAIN --ssl2

and later if I start feeling nice towards the people in the office I might every migrate the deleted items, but with the speed of it and the amount of moaning I'm expecting on Monday this is unlikey.



Trying to import the ica / vcf files has failed so far, trying to use curl and no dice, so will be playing with that more.

However I'm now running the iSync connector and half of the office have the MAPI connector installed and all seems ok... the real test is tomorrow morning of course.

Will update as things progress.

[davidfsmith]

*curse*

we're currently in the process of rolling back to CMGPro and are going to have a rethink on the migration, doing it all on one box is way to slow.

So I'll be building another server and migrating that work, also working close with Zimbra on the CMGPro migration so hopefully can make the whole process a lot smoother...

Regards

[davidfsmith]

Right we're back where we were before we started on Friday night / Saturday morning. Now to come up with a better plan for the migration.

[bwoods]

I'm with you on this one. Trying to think of way to keep downtime to a minimal. If you find a way to have minimal downtime, let me know, the only way I know now is to basically have downtime while you move from server A to B.

As for the calendars it seems to put them in a Folder and inside those are messages w/ the icalendar files, etc.

Keep me informed on your progress and what exactly are you trying to do =)

[davidfsmith]

Managed to accquire a server on a temp basis with the relevant space for our data that I can setup in a way in a way that makes me comfortable with moving the mail server across....

so new plan.

1) Transfer existing CMGPro server to temp server.
2) Rebuild old CMGPro server install and configure Zimbra.
3) Transfer from CMGPro to Zimbra using IMAPSync during the working week, with a final transfer over and then switch over (and reconfigure clients) during a weekend.

However while I'm waiting for the server I'm in the process of writing some PERL scripts to make things (hopefully) easier.

1) Script uses CMGPro CLI.pm to build a text file of accounts / aliases / groups / group membership that can then be pushed into zmprov
2) Script also builds a text file that can be used with IMAPSync to transfer the accounts
3) Creation of a script to work on the CMPGro server to read in the ics / vcf files for each user stored in /<cmgdir>/Accounts/<user>/Calendar.mdir/ and also /<cmgdir>/Accounts/<user>/Contacts.mdir/ the data from these files is pushed into the Zimbra server using REST

So far I've got the script getting the relevant data out of the CMGPro server for 1 and 2 - just need to build the script for 3.

Will update how it goes.

Regards

[davidfsmith]

Waiting on a new server from Dell to migrate to, so I can then migrate back to the old server with a fresh RHEL install and a fresh zimbra install....

Perl code - my god I'm rusty...

Anyway, script written which talks to CMGPro and gets the relevant data to build accounts / aliases / redirect all mail / groups / group members. It creates two files, one is a user / password list which can be used with imapsync and the other will be edited to work with zmprov.

The second script I'm still working on, but it takes the user file used for imapsync and gets all of the calendar / contact entries on the server, it will use REST to push the information directly into Zimbra.

Will update when there is more to update.

;-)