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NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7 Migration

NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7 Migration. E. Axel Larsson Drew University elarsson@drew.edu TTP EMEA Conference - January 2007. Agenda. Background and Motivation GroupWise 7 System Design Migration Process and Timetable Tools and Integrations. Some background…. Drew University

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NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7 Migration

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  1. NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7 Migration E. Axel Larsson Drew University elarsson@drew.edu TTP EMEA Conference - January 2007

  2. Agenda • Background and Motivation • GroupWise 7 System Design • Migration Process and Timetable • Tools and Integrations

  3. Some background… • Drew University • Located in northern New Jersey • Consists of a College of Liberal Arts, Theological, and Graduate school • Approximately 2,500 student FTEs • Largely residential • Standard laptop program for all CLA students • Highly managed student computers • Enterprise services on student notebooks.

  4. History • Drew has provided basic email service to all students, faculty, and staff since 1989.. • DEC All-In-One (OpenVMS) through 1998 • PMDF IMAP w/ Netscape Communicator 4.x + IMP Webmail (1998 – 2002) • Novell NetMail IMAP w/ Mozilla Mail + NetMail WebAccess (2002 – 2006) • Today: Novell GroupWise 7 SP1 w/ Windows and Cross-Platform clients + WebAccess

  5. Previous NetMail Deployment • Originally on Solaris (2001-2003) • Sun Enterprise 450 • Migrated to Red Hat AS 2.1 in Summer 2003 • Single-server, HP DL 360 G3 • 300GB of Fibre-attached SAN storage • Supported all employee and student mail, alumni forwarding addresses, and mailing lists. • Symantec CarrierScan for Anti-Virus • GWGuardian Anti-Spam/AV added in 2004 • Deployed on Windows Server 2003

  6. Why Switch? • Change in administration and change in expectations… • Calendars • Mobile device support • NetMail futures… • Insufficient information / transparency re: Hula to make a business decision. • Already contemplating a change to client software for existing solution. • Mozilla Suite to Mozilla Thunderbird

  7. Why GroupWise? • Relevant experience already on hand… • Novell Cluster Services for 3 years • GroupWise trial within technology area for 1 year • Confidence in our ability to support the solution • BlackBerry support recently available. • GW 7 client compared favorably with Outlook • Cost containment • No additional software licensing budget allocated for this project. • Administration cost needed to stay at 1 FTE or less

  8. Pilot project (Fall 2005) • Moved all technology staff to GroupWise. • President’s Office migrated. • Most pressing need was getting the presidential calendar in GW with appropriate proxy access for his staff. • BlackBerry Enterprise Server rollout. • Technology staff. • President. • Selected cabinet-level staff.

  9. Moving forward – Formationof a GroupWise task-force. • Representatives from all technology areas: • Computing and Network Services • Systems Administration • Enterprise Applications • User Support / Helpdesk • Instructional Technology Services • Training • Documentation • Administrative Computing

  10. Objectives • Use this as an opportunity to improve email service levels. • Implement clustering for fault-tolerance • Streamline the migration process • Self-service tools. • Copious training and support resources • Give people a reason to switch • Greater enterprise feature set, calendars, mobile devices, etc.

  11. GroupWise System Design • Best practice reference: • “Success with Clustering GroupWise 7” - Gregg Hinchman • 2 node NetWare 6.5 SP5 cluster built for pilot in Fall 2005 • Standalone GW system used by University Technology migrated. 1 PO + 1 domain. • New primary domain, GWIA, WebAccess, and Employee PO added. • 2 nodes and 2 student POs added in March

  12. GroupWise System Design • Final layout: • 4 nodes, 9 cluster resources • One primary domain / MTA • Two GWIAs / domains • Internet mail (SMTP) GWIA • GWIA to support IMAP/SMTP clients • One WebAccess agent / application / domain • GroupWise Messenger • Four Post Offices • University Technology PO (100 accounts - 50GB) • Employee PO (900 accounts, 500 used regularly - 150GB, 1gb mail quotas) • 2 Student POs (1,500 accounts each - 150GB each, 200mb mail quotas) • GW agents run from clustered volumes and in protected address spaces

  13. GroupWise System Design • Additional servers and services • HP DL360 G3 running Win2K3 for GWGuardian • 2 VMWare ESX virtual machines • BlackBerry Enterprise Server, GWMonitor service, and IDM Remote Loader for GW • SLES 9 Postfix / Mailman server • Replacement for NetMail listserv • LDAP alias replacement for @alumni.drew.edu forwarding • Coming soon / in progress • GroupWise Mobile Server • GW WebAccess migration to SLES 10

  14. GroupWise System Design • IDM Integration • Where to run the driver? • IDM engines running on SLES 9 servers • GW driver needs filesystem access to GW domain DB. Remote mount from a linux box is not supported. • Solution - Remote Loader service on Windows box, domain DB access over NCP with Client32. • Policy decisions • Creation - based upon aux class attribute • Placement • Employee / Technology POs - based on group membership • Student POs - Random placement

  15. A Phased Deployment • Phase 1 – Early Adopters • March 1, 2006 – May 1, 2006 • New users were still set up on NetMail by default. • Users could “opt-in” through a self-service web site. Faculty/staff only. • Migration tools available: • Transend Migrator (third-party) for moving IMAP mail and Mozilla address books. • University Technology student employees moved to GW for training and support purposes.

  16. A Phased Deployment • Phase 2 – Full Deployment • May 1, 2006 – November 1, 2006 • New users created on GroupWise. • New computers come with GW client preinstalled – all existing images updated. • Self-service tools available, GW now available for students. Enhanced migration tools available: • Home-grown server-side IMAP copier • Home-grown Mozilla address book converter.

  17. A Phased Deployment • Phase 3 – Compulsory Migration • All remaining GW accounts turned on November 1, 2006. • Old NetMail system remains available for migration of old email messages only. • Users have until March 1, 2007 to retrieve old messages. • Phase 4 – NetMail discontinued • March 1, 2007 – Old email server decommissioned.

  18. Tools to help with the Migration • Self-service account activation • Web-based “wizard” points user to docs, client install instructions, etc. and allows for one-click account activation. • Sets up forwarding on the old NetMail system. • Creates GW account by toggling aux class attribute which triggers IDM driver. • Self-service address book converter • Converts exported Mozilla address books into a .vcf format which can be imported into GW. • Web-based • Developed by a student employee in PHP

  19. Tools to help with the Migration • Self-service mail copy utility. • Moves users mail from NetMail to GroupWise using IMAP • Web-based • Users are presented with a list of folders to migrate • Actual migration is submitted and performed as a background task. • Users don’t need to keep browser open or wait while migration proceeds. • Long-running daemon process maintains a pool of IMAP copier worker processes to complete migration jobs. • Developed by a student employee in PHP

  20. Aftermath… • Customers who were asking for the GW featureset have been very pleased with the results • Surprised that compulsory migration (Nov. 1st) did not trigger a substantial increase in Helpdesk calls. • Some complaints about performance of the Mac client. • Unanticipated demand for automatic mail forwarding • High GroupWise system reliability. • Minor issues with the cluster servers - Java related ABENDs on the WebAccess node.

  21. For more information… • depts.drew.edu/cns/groupwise • E. Axel Larssonelarsson@drew.edu

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