Email Migrations - Your guide to a successful email migration project.

This post covers some of the challenges faced when using the Microsoft Transporter Suite to perform Directory Synchronisation (Synchronization for US citizens!) between Exchange 2007 and Lotus Domino (Lotus Notes), and then introducing a sub-domain routing topology during the migration period.    Detailed technical documentation is hard to come by for this.

The version of Lotus Notes in my example is r8.   I mention Exchange 2010 in the post title, as Microsoft current advise deploying certain Exchange 2007 technologies (eg- Transporter Suite) to facilitate a migration from Lotus Notes to Exchange 2010.

By following the detailed Transporter documentation (free download alongside the Transporter binaries) a basic Directory Synchronisation can be achieved, with Lotus Notes addresses represented in Active Directory, and Exchange addresses represented in Domino.

Things get interesting when you try and implement a sub-domain routing topology to allow for a single domain name-space to be used for both Domino and Exchange.      For example, if  CONTUSO.COM was being migrated from Domino to Exchange 2007, then best-practice dictates you implement Transporter Suite DirSync,  an SMTP connector between the two environments,  and route all inbound internet email via Exchange.  Then start migrating mailboxes.  This, of course, is trivialising a complex operation.

However, a key aspect of this situation is the ability to use sub-domains for email routing.

For emails from Exchange to Domino, you could use the namespace:   @NOTES.CONTUSO.COM

For emails from Domino to Exchange, you could use the namespace:   @EXCHANGE.CONTUSO.COM

There are two aspects to this:

1)  Internet email needs to be go via Exchange to Domino.   It would be great if we could get all Domino addresses into AD with an accurate relay address to get the emails onto Domino.  In reality this is rarely the case, and to mitigate the issue, Exchange 2007 allows for an SMTP connector to forward all mail it cannot match to AD, onto a Smart Host (Domino).  So no real issue here.

2) During the migration there will be users on both Domino and Exchange.   The Exchange users need to be able to email Domino users from the Global Address Book (GAL).   Therefore the Windows Contact objects need to contain a valid Target Address (relay) field.

This is where the main reason for this post appears….

The default Target Address generated by Transporter to represent a Domino user would be as follows:

Fred_Bloggs/CONTUSO%CONTUSO@notes.contuso.com

The problem is that the FULL NAME field in the Notes Person Record for this user = “Fred Bloggs”, with no underscore character.   Mail to this address may not be delivered and generate a Non Delivery Report (NDR).   Transporter has inserted the underscore character to replace the space character, as that is not valid in an SMTP address.

If your Domino environment is small, maybe you manually (or via an Agent) add an additional address for each user with the underscore.  But if there is a large number of users this may not be possible.

All is not lost though.   In the Transporter application Windows folder structure, there are a set of configuration files that are used by Transporter.   This can be manipulated to help with this situation.

Typically the files are under   c:\program files\microsoft transporter tools\config\connector\*

The file you are after is dominotoexchangerules.tbl

Backup all files in this folder before you start making any changes, and do all your tests in a lab environment before committing to production.

The section in the dominotoexchangerules.tbl file you need is:

Alias = ISEQUAL( Alias, “”, ISEQUAL( InetAddr, “”, SecALIAS, Strip( InetAddr, “@”, “L”, “R” ) ), Alias )
DispName = ISEQUAL( Resource, “”, X500( FullName, “CN” ), Strip( FullName, “;”, “L”, “R” ) )
Name = Strip( FullName, “;”, “L”, “R” )
LastName = ISEQUAL( LastName, “”, ISEQUAL( FirstName, “”, X500( FullName, “CN”), “” ) , LastName)
NOTESADDR = NotesLocal “@” MailDomain
TA = ISEQUAL( FwdAddr, “”, ISEQUAL( CFGPARM(“DominoSmtpDomain”), Strip( InetAddr, “@”, “L” ), InetAddr, ISEQUAL(SmtpLocal, “”, SmtpLocEsc, SmtpLocal) “%” MailDomain “@” CFGPARM(“DominoSmtpDomain”)), FwdAddr )

For details on the syntax used do a search on Google for “Exchange 2003 Lotus Notes Connector TBL”.   The syntax used for Exchange 2007 is similar, but not the same.

The trick is to edit the file so it looks like this:

Alias = ISEQUAL( Alias, “”, ISEQUAL( InetAddr, “”, SecALIAS, Strip( InetAddr, “@”, “L”, “R” ) ), Alias )
DispName = ISEQUAL( Resource, “”, X500( FullName, “CN” ), Strip( FullName, “;”, “L”, “R” ) )
Name = Strip( FullName, “;”, “L”, “R” )
LastName = ISEQUAL( LastName, “”, ISEQUAL( FirstName, “”, X500( FullName, “CN”), “” ) , LastName)
NOTESADDR = NotesLocal “@” MailDomain
;TA = ISEQUAL( FwdAddr, “”, ISEQUAL( CFGPARM(“DominoSmtpDomain”), Strip( InetAddr, “@”, “L” ), InetAddr, ISEQUAL(SmtpLocal, “”, SmtpLocEsc, SmtpLocal) “%” MailDomain “@” CFGPARM(“DominoSmtpDomain”)), FwdAddr )
TA = STRIP(PriSMTP, “@”, “L”, “R”) “@notes.contuso.com”

This has placed a semi-colon at the front of the original line starting with TA = , and then added a new line for this parameter, which will generate a Target Address using the left-hand side of the internet address and the SMTP sub-domain name-space used to route mail to Domino.

There is an entry in the GUI config of the Transporter to specify the Domino SMTP domain also – good idea to put in the same sub-domain value here.    This is what was used to generate the default TA value, and is overridden by the change I suggest.    However, I advise setting it anyway as a reference.

Note:  if you wish, you can use an alternate naming format based on the alias value.  You just use this line instead:   TA = Alias “@notes.contuso.com”

The reason I do not generally recommend the use of the Alias@notes.contuso.com   name format is that in Domino your Resources and Mail-In Databases do not have an Alias value set, and have no Alias field that can be populated.   However, they do have an internet address field set.   Therefore, you can include them in Dir Sync by populating them all with a valid internet address.  This will allow them to appear in the Exchange GAL via Dir Sync.  If they have a blank internet address field in Domino, they will not appear in the Exchange GAL via DirSync.

Once you have made the change, you need to remove all the Lotus Notes Windows Contacts from AD, restart the Transporter Directory Sync Windows Service, and force a Full Sync from Domino to Exchange.

(Don’t forget, you can always go back to the original configuration if this produces results you do not expect.)

In Exchange 2007 Management Console (EMC), check the Target Address fields after the Sync has completed.  You should see the new format of   firstname.lastname@notes.contuso.com .    This is now a valid Target Address for Domino user mailboxes.   Domino is tolerant of receiving emails that are not an exact match – it will perform a series of look-ups to try and get a match.

The new Target Address for the example user will now be:

Fred.Bloggs@notes.contuso.com

Now you need to edit the exchangetodominorules.tbl file in a similar way.  For this file you need to comment out the line starting with “FwdAddr ……” and replace it with this line.

FwdAddr = STRIP(PriSMTP, “@”, “L”, “R”) “@exchange.contuso.com”

This will generate an address entry in the Domino Address Book for any new Exchange mailboxes, and will stamp a forwarding address of format:

John.Bloggs@exchange.contuso.com

You have a successful sub-domain routing mechanism for mail flow and DirSync setup between Domino and Exchange 2007.  You can start looking at Free/Busy, and at the actual migration.

As always, test this to your own satisfaction in a private lab scenario.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Transporter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.