Transcript NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7 Migration

NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7
Migration
E. Axel Larsson
Drew University
[email protected]
TTP EMEA Conference - January 2007
Agenda
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Background and Motivation
GroupWise 7 System Design
Migration Process and Timetable
Tools and Integrations
Some background…
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Drew University
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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
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Highly managed student computers
Enterprise services on student notebooks.
History
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Drew has provided basic email service to all
students, faculty, and staff since 1989..
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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
Previous NetMail Deployment
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Originally on Solaris (2001-2003)
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Migrated to Red Hat AS 2.1 in Summer 2003
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Sun Enterprise 450
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
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Deployed on Windows Server 2003
Why Switch?
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Change in administration and change in
expectations…
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NetMail futures…
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Calendars
Mobile device support
Insufficient information / transparency re: Hula to
make a business decision.
Already contemplating a change to client
software for existing solution.
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Mozilla Suite to Mozilla Thunderbird
Why GroupWise?
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Relevant experience already on hand…
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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
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No additional software licensing budget allocated for this
project.
Administration cost needed to stay at 1 FTE or less
Pilot project (Fall 2005)
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Moved all technology staff to GroupWise.
President’s Office migrated.
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Most pressing need was getting the presidential
calendar in GW with appropriate proxy access for
his staff.
BlackBerry Enterprise Server rollout.
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Technology staff.
President.
Selected cabinet-level staff.
Moving forward – Formation
of a GroupWise task-force.
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Representatives from all technology areas:
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Computing and Network Services
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Instructional Technology Services
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Systems Administration
Enterprise Applications
User Support / Helpdesk
Training
Documentation
Administrative Computing
Objectives
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Use this as an opportunity to improve email
service levels.
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Streamline the migration process
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Implement clustering for fault-tolerance
Self-service tools.
Copious training and support resources
Give people a reason to switch
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Greater enterprise feature set, calendars, mobile
devices, etc.
GroupWise System Design
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Best practice reference:
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2 node NetWare 6.5 SP5 cluster built for pilot
in Fall 2005
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“Success with Clustering GroupWise 7” - Gregg
Hinchman
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
GroupWise System Design
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Final layout:
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4 nodes, 9 cluster resources
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One primary domain / MTA
Two GWIAs / domains
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One WebAccess agent / application / domain
GroupWise Messenger
Four Post Offices
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Internet mail (SMTP) GWIA
GWIA to support IMAP/SMTP clients
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
GroupWise System Design
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Additional servers and services
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HP DL360 G3 running Win2K3 for GWGuardian
2 VMWare ESX virtual machines
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BlackBerry Enterprise Server, GWMonitor service, and
IDM Remote Loader for GW
SLES 9 Postfix / Mailman server
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Replacement for NetMail listserv
LDAP alias replacement for @alumni.drew.edu forwarding
Coming soon / in progress
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GroupWise Mobile Server
GW WebAccess migration to SLES 10
GroupWise System Design
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IDM Integration
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Where to run the driver?
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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
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Creation - based upon aux class attribute
Placement
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Employee / Technology POs - based on group membership
Student POs - Random placement
A Phased Deployment
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Phase 1 – Early Adopters
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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:
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Transend Migrator (third-party) for moving IMAP mail
and Mozilla address books.
University Technology student employees moved
to GW for training and support purposes.
A Phased Deployment
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Phase 2 – Full Deployment
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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:
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Home-grown server-side IMAP copier
Home-grown Mozilla address book converter.
A Phased Deployment
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Phase 3 – Compulsory Migration
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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
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March 1, 2007 – Old email server
decommissioned.
Tools to help with the Migration
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Self-service account activation
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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
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Converts exported Mozilla address books into a .vcf format
which can be imported into GW.
Web-based
Developed by a student employee in PHP
Tools to help with the Migration
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Self-service mail copy utility.
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Moves users mail from NetMail to GroupWise
using IMAP
Web-based
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Users are presented with a list of folders to migrate
Actual migration is submitted and performed as a
background task.
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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
Aftermath…
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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.
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Minor issues with the cluster servers - Java related
ABENDs on the WebAccess node.
For more information…
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depts.drew.edu/cns/groupwise
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E. Axel Larsson
[email protected]