Cornell's Migration of Email to Exchange

Migration completed

Cornell's migration from sendmail to Exchange was completed by late summer, 2010. As of March, 2011, Outlook is available for both Windows and MacOS. When Exchange is upgraded, probably during the summer of 2011, Outlook Web Access (i.e. access to the Exchange server from Linux) will have all the same features as does Outlook.

Office Upgrade

Under Windows, the latest, patched version of Office 2007 (SP2) Outlook is required as a mail and calendar client for use with Exchange.

• Be sure you've allowed your LEPP Windows system to reboot with all patches before the Exchange migration.
• Home systems running Office 2007 must be running Office 2007 SP2 with all subsequent patches.
  • Office 2007 is available for home use from CIT for only $10.

Almost all Windows systems at LEPP have been upgraded to the most recent, patched version of Office 2007 as of early March, 2010. A few systems have inadequate disk space and will be upgraded in the near future..

Cornell's Email Migration to Exchange (overview)

Migration of LEPP email accounts happened overnight and destop mail readers were updated on March 8 for Wilson Lab , March 9 for Newman Lab and March 10 for those who couldn't be scheduled for the previous days. Those people who were not migrated then will have to be individuallly scheduled at another date.

Details of the migration procedure are at

• http://www.cit.cornell.edu/services/guides/facstaff_email/
  • Note: the schedule they show for LEPP is wrong: it had to be postponed until March because it conflicted with NSF site visits.

Advantages of Exchange for LEPP:

• Integrates email and calendaring
• Increases email storage limit from 300 MegaBytes to 7 GigaBytes. ( > 20x as much storage, but retirees will be limited to 1GB)
• Increased maximum attachment size from 10MB to 50MB.
• Email and Calendar responsibilities can be delegated to others
• Encryption is available for on-campus mail

"Special Mailboxes" will be migrated later in March. Details will be forthcoming.

Ahead of time, in February

Reminders were sent about the migration and what had to be done.

• In your Mail Reader (Thunderbird, etc): change the IMAP (and/or POP) server from Postoffice#.mail.cornell.edu to _<NetID>_.mail.cornell.edu
  (Step 1 of "Part 1")
  • A few other changes may be needed. See http://www.cit.cornell.edu/services/guides/facstaff_email/ for details.
• Validate your NetID password with the Exchange server (Step 2 of "Part 1")
  • https://netid.cornell.edu/adactivation/password.html

• Fill out the survey at http://surveys.cit.cornell.edu/Survey.aspx?s=2362ca2339e94b35b1fce5b4615d8498

The Night of Your Migration

Email must not be accessed during the overnight copy. You must exit from all mail readers so they don't access the mail servers on their own. The transfer of your email from Postoffice to Exchange will be unreliable if you try to read your email that night. Incoming email will be held and delivered after existing messages have been copied from the Postoffice computers to the Exchange server.

The Morning After

The next morning, using your current mail reader (Thunderbird, etc.) you must verify that the email migration was successful

• check that all email and folders have been transferred
• send a message and make sure it is received at the destination
• receive and read a new message

Notify the LEPP computer group immediately if you encounter problems. A phone call might be appropriate if your email is not working! Alternatively, you can report problems by using the Web page at https://wiki.lepp.cornell.edu/lepp/bin/view/Computing/ServiceRequest

CIT consultants helped people to move to Outlook on LEPP computers the morning after an account was moved. They won't be available for later migrations.

Mail Readers for Exchange

• Windows: use Outlook
  • If your home Windows computer does not have Office 2007 SP2, use Outlook Web Access Light at https://exchange.cornell.edu/ from Firefox. Avoid use of Internet Explorer: yet another serious security bug was just recently discovered.

• Mac:
  • CIT supports Apple Mail v4 under SnowLeopard on Intel.
  • CIT also supports (and recommends) Outlook for Macintosh (included in Microsoft Office 2011)
  • Otherwise, use Outlook Web Access Light at https://exchange.cornell.edu/ from Safari or another browser.

• Linux: use Outlook Web Access Light at https://exchange.cornell.edu/ from Firefox or another browser.

Utilities are available to copy local (desktop) mail folders from the current mail reader (Thunderbird or Eudora) to Outlook or Apple Mail. CIT consultants helped with this on LEPP computers the day after.

Limitations and notes

• Outlook Express and Eudora cannot be supported (CIT support for Eudora stops in May).
• Outlook or Outlook Web Access (which replaces WebMail) is needed for Calendaring.
• Thunderbird will continue to work, but only for mail, not for Calendaring.
• Thunderbird v3 has improved search, etc. It's almost as good as what's in Outlook.
• Exchange generates apparently empty control mail messages which Thunderbird displays but which are hidden by Outlook. Do NOT delete them.
• Either Outlook or Thunderbird can be used to access mail archived on LEPP's IMAP servers, but it probably is better to use Thunderbird for that.
• Outlook should not be run at the same time from multiple computers logged in with the same NetID. Mail corruption has been known to happen. Always exit from your mail reader when leaving for the day.
• Outlook's builtin anti-spam filter is much too agressive. It classifies legitimate Cornell mail as spam. Leave it turned off.
• Do NOT enable Archiving. It prevents backups.
• Deleted messages can be recovered for up to 30 days after the "Deleted Items" folder has been emptied. After that, no Backups are available.
  • Select the menu Tools, item "Recover Deleted Items".

Training for Mail Readers for Exchange

Microsoft provides free interactive online training for Outlook and other Office products

• Office training is available at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102255331033.aspx
• Outlook training is available at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102188671033.aspx

Cornell provides training for the supported mail readers

• Links for Outlook, Entourage and AppleMail (soon) are at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/training/exchange/index.cfm
  • For Outlook, see http://www.cit.cornell.edu/training/exchange/outlook.cfm
  • Brief descriptions of Outlook procedures are at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/services/outlook/howto/email/index.cfm
  • Free online Outlook tutorials are available at http://cornell.veplan.net/Education/catalog.aspx?c=1316
• Free and fee-based workshop registrations for Outlook and other mail readers are at http://cornell.veplan.net/Education/catalog.aspx?c=1370

Oracle Calendar Migration to Exchange

Oracle Calendar scheduling will be terminated on June 5th. All entries in Oracle Calendar will be copied overnight to Exchange. This is a simultaneous conversion for all of campus, not just LEPP.

Notices sent to Lab members

Several messages are being sent to Lab members to help them prepare for Cornell's migration to Exchange.

Message of February 4th:

Exchange email move: Steps you need to do by March 1st.

Message of February 18th

Exchange email move: a survey and reminder

Message containing an abbreviated summary of required steps sent later:

Exchange email move: you still need to do step 2

-- SeldenBall - 2010-01-22 -- SeldenBall - 2010-02-19 -- SeldenBall - 2010-03-11