LOTUS NOTES MIGRATION GUIDE

1. Lotus Notes Mail Migration with Cloudiway

Cloudiway’s mail migration solution helps businesses perform elaborate technical migrations through a simple SaaS interface. As a result, mail migrations require no additional software installation or overhead, and migrations can be performed securely and quickly.

Two of the most common migration strategies are cutover and staged migrations. Cutover strategies involve migrating all mailboxes over a weekend, ready for your users on Monday morning. Staged strategies provide more flexible migration options, as discussed on this page:

How Lotus Notes Migration Works

The solution requires an agent running On-Premises in charge of communicating with the Cloudiway platform. The agent runs on a workstation (not on the Domino server) with a Lotus Notes client installed and configured.

The Cloudiway platform never tries to connect to your On-Premises environment. Instead, the local agent periodically connects to the platform and checks if a local task has to be executed.

The agent connects to the Notes mailbox databases and dumps it locally. Then, zips and uploads it to the Cloudiway server. All exchanges are performed over a secure channel (TLS 1.2).

Once uploaded to the Cloudiway server, it is pushed to the target (Google, Office 365, or Exchange). At the end of the migration, the data uploaded to the Cloudiway server is removed.

2. Security

For more information about security, please refer to this article.

3. Performance

For more information about migration performance, please refer to this article.

4. Mail migration scope

4.1. What can be migrated

When migrating from Lotus Notes, the following mail-related items can be migrated:

Emails
Contacts (Lotus Notes contacts are stored locally. However, it is possible to synchronize them on the Notes database stored on the Domino server. Once in the Domino server, contacts can be migrated, click here to learn how to synchronize Lotus Notes contacts )
Calendars
Folders
Shared mailboxes
Archives

Anything not mentioned above is not migrated. In particular, permissions, rooms, distribution lists, signatures, and encrypted mails are not migrated.

Please contact Cloudiway for more information.

4.2. Audience

This guide is aimed at experienced system administrators who are capable of connecting to remote systems and using a variety of administration tools.

Although we provide support for our own products, we do not provide support for third-party products such as PowerShell or server administration of Lotus Notes or Exchange.

If you are concerned you might have any difficulty completing these steps, please consider a solution with our consulting team. This will ensure a fast, cost-effective, and stress-free implementation.

4.3. PreRequisites

Lotus Notes client is a 32-bit application. Therefore it can’t use more than 4Gb of RAM.

Please note that migration has only been tested on Lotus Notes client version 8.0 and later, using .Net framework 4.7.2 minimum, with at least 4 GB RAM and 100 Gb Hard Drive space.

5. Pre-migration configuration

5.1. Before you start

The following table contains a list of target mail migration prerequisites. You will only need the items associated with your chosen target.

Name	Description	Location
Cloudiway	Account to configure the Cloudiway Platform for your migration.	https://portal.cloudiway.com
Lotus Notes. A notes.id with access to all mailboxes	This ID will be used with the Cloudiway agent (downloadable in the steps below) to communicate with your Lotus Notes server.	Local PC with Lotus Notes client installed. Make sure your notes.ini file refers to this notes.id. We recommend you create a migration account and use its notes.id, then delete it after migration.
Target: Google Admin	To configure the Google feeds.	https://admin.google.com
Target: Office 365 Admin	Used to configure Azure Active Directory Application and associated permissions.	https://aad.portal.azure.com

Very little preparation is required on the Lotus Notes side. Before you start configuring the Cloudiway platform for mail migration, make sure you have:

listed the notes.id (that has access to all mailboxes). You need to open the Notes client and login with this notes.id. The last logged-in notes.id remains automatically referenced in the notes.ini file.
chosen to enable or disable the option to replicate contacts to the mail databases of the users (this ensures users’ personal contacts are included in migration);
ensured that any locally-stored mail archives to be migrated have been identified and moved to your Domino server or to the network that will host all the archives, preferably in the default location (archiveusername); and,
verified that there is at least 100 Gb free on your Lotus Notes server.

5.2. Create your user mailboxes

Cloudiway migrates between existing user mailboxes and does not provides a tool to provision user mailboxes. Therefore, the user mailboxes must be created prior to the migration. You can set up user accounts on the target Microsoft 365 tenant in several ways. (The following links are to Microsoft documentation.)

5.3. Mapping Table

During the migration, Cloudiway uses a mapping table to perform the conversion of email addresses into email headers, and calendar items.

Important: the mapping table must be exhaustive, any missing email address will not be converted, and would end up with a loss of broken calendar items. Cloudiway automatically populates this mapping table when source mailboxes are discovered by Get List functionality explained below. However, make sure if the mapping table was populated automatically that you are not missing any email address.

6. Use the Cloudiway platform to migrate your mail

6.1. Create your connectors

For Cloudiway to migrate your Mailboxes, it needs to be able to communicate with both your source (Lotus Notes) and target (Office365/Exchange or Google) domains. To do this, Cloudiway uses connectors. You will need to set up a connector for each source tenant you wish to migrate and each target tenant that mail should be migrated to. Follow the steps from the page below to configure your connectors:

For large projects, it’s possible to create multiple connectors that will be used in parallel from connector pools. Please contact Cloudiway consulting services if you need to set up such configuration.

As already discussed, a small agent must be downloaded for the connector to communicate with your Notes server, and this is also covered in the Lotus Notes source connector configuration article.

6.2. Configure the global settings for migration

Now that you have set up at least one source and target connector, you’re ready to configure your global settings. Using the Cloudiway platform, is simply a matter of selecting what you want to migrate.

From the Mails area of https://portal.cloudiway.com, click on Global Settings

Most of the options are self-explanatory.

The Convert Email Address option needs further explanation. The Convert Email Address option is switched on by default (and is best left on). When activated, this option rewrites email addresses found in the email headers, calendar items and replaces source email addresses with their corresponding target email addresses in the mapping table. Therefore, it’s important that all users exist in the mapping table before migration begins.

Archive Mails Older Than is to migrate the emails older than specified date and time in the past to the target archive mailbox and Migrate Everything to Archives is to migrate all the emails to the target archive mailbox. See the 7.2. Migration to archives section for further information.

Click on the Save button at the bottom of the screen to update your global settings.

6.3. Import or create your users into Cloudiway platform

There are two ways to add users that you wish to migrate:

CSV file import.
Create a single user.

Note that importing users into Cloudiway won’t create the user mailboxes in the target tenant. See Create your user mailboxes

Option 1: CSV file import

If you have a CSV file of all your users, you can upload the file to Cloudiway. The file must have the following fields in the header row:

FirstName;LastName;SourceEmail;TargetEmail;SourceRecipientType;TargetRecipientType;BatchName

1. Ensure you’re still in the Mails Migration area of portal.cloudiway.com and go to User List / Mailboxes

2. Click on MANAGE and select Import

3. If required, click on Download sample CSV and add your users to the CSV file using the sample headers (FirstName; LastName; SourceEmail; TargetEmail; BatchName)

4. When you have a complete CSV file with the correct headers, click on the BROWSE button

5. Locate your CSV file within your own file system, and double-click on it to select it

6. Select the appropriate connectors in the Source and Target fields

7. Click on the UPLOAD button.

8. If you see any error messages, check your CSV file to ensure it has seven columns, each with a separator (including the last) and try uploading again.

Option 2: Create a single user

Many of our first-time customers create a single user for testing purposes. This provides a means of watching the migration process without affecting all users.

Click on MANAGE > Create User and enter the following details:

For more information regarding the different fields, check out this article. Repeat the process for any more users you’d like to create.

6.4. Activate and monitor your migration

Cloudiway is an incremental migration platform that supports delta passes. Every time you restart the migration of a mailbox, only items that haven’t already been copied to the target will be migrated and for those already migrated items that have been modified in the source will be updated in the target. The platform, therefore, does not duplicate items in the target, just updates them.

The migration strategy usually consists of at least 2 migration passes, one before the cutover and another pass after the cutover:

1^st migration pass: which migrates the majority of the mailbox. Select mailboxes, click on MIGRATION, then the Start button. Explained below in more detail.
Cutover: You have to manually remove the domain from the source tenant, attach it to the target tenant and change the MX record in your DNS server. This is not automated by Cloudiway.
2^nd migration pass, delta pass: which migrates what hasn’t been migrated and updates modified items. Select mailboxes, click on MIGRATION, then the Start button. Explained below in more detail.
3^rd migration pass, delta pass: 24 hours after cutover you can submit an additional delta pass to make sure no residual email is left behind due to DNS propagation delays. Select mailboxes, click on MIGRATION, then the Start button. Explained below in more detail.

You can submit as many migration passes as you want for 3 months and until consuming the amount of GBs allowed by the assigned licenses but usually, you only need one before the cutover and another after the cutover. Find out more about the delta migration passes:

What a migration pass takes to complete depends on a lot of factors. Find out more about the migration performance:

You can create user batches from the Batches tab to easily group subset of mailboxes. Click on the + icon and enter a batch name:

After creating the different batch, under Users tab, select the users you want to assign to a specific batch, click on BATCH button and Add to Batch:

Now that you have performed all the pre-migration steps within your tenants and within Cloudiway, you’re ready to migrate. We recommend you run a test migration on a single user first to check that your configuration produces the outcome you expect.

To start your migration, select the users or batch you wish to migrate.

For users, under Users tab, select all the users you want to submit and click on MIGRATION, then the Start button.

For user batch, under Batches tab, select the user batch you want to submit and click on MIGRATION, then the Start button.

Your migrations will be scheduled and will begin as soon as cloud resources are available.

7. Other migration options

7.1. Shared mailbox migration

Shared mailboxes can also be migrated in a similar way.
For this, create a file named LotusSharedMailboxes.csv in the same directory than the agent.

Here is the format (header row):
email;servername;sharedmailbox path

Example: sharedmailbox1@source.com;domino01;mail\sharedmailbox1.nsf

email is the email address of the shared mailbox.
servername is the Domino server name where the shared mailbox is stored.
path is the folder location on the shared mailbox on the Domino server.

7.2. Archive Migration

Cloudiway solution allows to migrate Lotus Archives.

First, you need to enable this setting in the configuration.json where you must set MigrateArchives = true.
Lotus Notes archive migration is managed directly from the Notes agent, not from the Cloudiway platform. The Archive view under mail migration is not used by Lotus Notes migration.

Instead, you must create a file named LotusArchives.csv in the same directory than the agent. This is where you will define the location of the archives.
Archives can be stored in a Domino server or in a network path.

Format of LotusArchives.csv
The CSV file must contain a header row with the following data:

email;NetworkFile;servername;archive path

email is the user email address associated with the archive;
NetworkFile is a boolean (true | false) that specifies if the archive is hosted on a network share (true) or on a Domino server (false);
Servername is the Domino server name where the archive is stored.
path is the folder location on the archive.

On a Domino server, it would be the relative path of the nsf archive file, for instance, archive\archivefile.nsf
On a network drive, it would be the path of the archive. For example, if the file is stored in \\NasServer\Archives, you can first map it to a drive (net use h: \\NasServer\Archives)
the path of the archive in the CSV file would then be h:\archivefile.nsf

Example of csv file:
email;NetworkFile;servername;archive path
bob@source.com;true;;h:\bobarchive.nsf
john@source.com;false;domino01;archive\johnarchive.nsf

If a user has multiple archives, you must reference all the archives in the csv file, for instance:
email;NetworkFile;servername;archive path
bob@source.com;true;;h:\bobarchive1.nsf
bob@source.com;true;;h:\bobarchive2.nsf
bob@source.com;true;;h:\bobarchive3.nsf

Important note:

Lotus archives are always migrated to the Microsoft Office 365 online archive. If your target user does not have an archive, the migration will fail.

7.3. Running Multiple Agents

If you want to run more migrations in parallel, you need to setup several workstations.
Let’s say that you want to run 4 agents simultaneously:

Install 4 Workstations and configure 4 Notes clients.
Create 4 Notes Connector.
On each workstation, download the agent of 1 connector and its associated configuration.json.

Do not use the same configuration.json on multiple agents/computers.

It would have unpredictable results such as automatically stopping migrations running on other agents.

In the cloudiway User List, dispatch your users among the different connectors.
Now, when you will schedule the migration of 1 user, it will start on the associated agent.

8. Troubleshooting

Cloudiway provides an extensive knowledge base with many resources, including common error messages, video guides, and downloads.

Please visit the entire knowledge base here (where you can search for keywords or read through topics): https://help.cloudiway.com/

The knowledge base also contains information on how you can ask for further support, should you require it.