Migrating to the cloud
- A question about Microsoft Online Services Migration Tool.
Lets say we need to migrate a vast amount of mailboxes to Exchange Online services.
Can i run multiple instances of Microsoft Online Services Migration Tool on various computers or am i limited to one single instance on a single computer?
Answers
- You can run the Migration Tool on multiple computers at the same time. Each instance would not be aware of the others so you can't migrate in a typical 'farm' fashion using a master console as some third-party applications support, so you'll need to simply select different lists of mailboxes to run manually on each workstation.
Jeff Schertz, PointBridge | MVP | MCITP: Enterprise Messaging | MCTS: OCS- Marked As Answer byErik Ashby-MSOLModeratorMonday, October 19, 2009 8:33 PM
- Also note that you can increase the number of threads that are used in a migration to increase performance.
Bottom line to increase performance:
1. You can run N-Number of migration machines at a sigle time provided you have bandwith/ and enough source server resources.
2. You can increase the migration thread count to increase how fast migrations can proceed.
Finally, we have had several customers run multiple instances on a single box. Although multiple instances was not tested (since you can increase threads on a box), there are no techinical known limitations to running 2 or 3 instances on a single box.
Erik- Marked As Answer byErik Ashby-MSOLModeratorMonday, October 19, 2009 8:37 PM
All Replies
- You can run the Migration Tool on multiple computers at the same time. Each instance would not be aware of the others so you can't migrate in a typical 'farm' fashion using a master console as some third-party applications support, so you'll need to simply select different lists of mailboxes to run manually on each workstation.
Jeff Schertz, PointBridge | MVP | MCITP: Enterprise Messaging | MCTS: OCS- Marked As Answer byErik Ashby-MSOLModeratorMonday, October 19, 2009 8:33 PM
- Also note that you can increase the number of threads that are used in a migration to increase performance.
Bottom line to increase performance:
1. You can run N-Number of migration machines at a sigle time provided you have bandwith/ and enough source server resources.
2. You can increase the migration thread count to increase how fast migrations can proceed.
Finally, we have had several customers run multiple instances on a single box. Although multiple instances was not tested (since you can increase threads on a box), there are no techinical known limitations to running 2 or 3 instances on a single box.
Erik- Marked As Answer byErik Ashby-MSOLModeratorMonday, October 19, 2009 8:37 PM
- Just to add a bit of detail, increasing the maximum thread value simply opens more 'connections' to the same target mailbox for migration data, it doesn't actually open more connections to multiple mailboxes simultaneously, it's still a single-mailbox-at-a-time process. Moving to multiple consoles (or instances of the application) would be needed to push mailboxes in parallel.
Jeff Schertz, PointBridge | MVP | MCITP: Enterprise Messaging | MCTS: OCS Thanks for the answer. But there are still some unclear items.
For example when moving mailboxes through the Move-Mailbox cmdlet, you run into the problem of the legacyExchangeDN when users reply to mails in there inbox. What happends when moving Exchange to the cloud?
How does the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tool connect to the Exchange on Prem and Exchange Online?
I would expect it would use a MAPI connection on prem, while using RPC over HTTP (SSL) to connect to Exchange online.
How does the Microsoft Online Services tool work? Does it pass on the needed commands on to exchange, where than Exchange processes the data directly to Exchange Online (so it does not process any data itself), or is all data processed by the server running the Microsoft Migration tool?
- The Microsoft Online Services Migration Tool uses our own set of Powershell cmdlets and replaces the legacyExchangeDN with our own. You will not have the reply issue if using our tool. Keep in mind, if you then import from a PST file after using our Migration Tool, then yes - you will have the reply issue.
As for my understanding, and I could be wrong, the host running the Migration Tool processes the Data, so the flow would like something like this >
On-premise Exchange > Migration Tool > Exchange Online
As for how the Migration Tool connects, I will gather that information and provide you with an answer on a later post.
If you have any more questions, let me know
-William Fiddes

