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On December 12th, 2008, TSO held a Q&A session about the upcoming student Zimbra email migration to OIT (see below for more details). The minutes of the meeting are at the bottom of this page. The questions raised during that Q&A have been compiled here.

-----Original Message-----
From: Luttrell, Mike
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 4:50 PM
To: 'phd-list@cc.gatech.edu'; 'cocms-list@cc.gatech.edu'; 'undergraduates@cc.gatech.edu'
Cc: Allred, Adam; Bowens, Mashan; Carpenter, Randy; Chandler, James; Conley, Doug; Crowell, Brian; Davis, Debbie; Gordon, Tonya; Huneycutt, Chad; Kriigel, James; Mercer, David Allen; Poole, Brian; Poole, Russ; Pugh, Nyree A; Ross, Daniel; Smith, Uwanna; Tabb, Phillip Yancey; Wan, Peter; Watson, Keith; 'cc-tso-availability@lists.gatech.edu'; 'lab-managers@cc.gatech.edu'; 'faculty@cc.gatech.edu'; 'staff@cc.gatech.edu'; #COC KLAUS-1116 Seminar Room East
Subject: Student Zimbra E-mail Migration to OIT - Question and Answer Session

Good Afternoon,

Due to the volume of student emails that TSO has received with questions about the migration, we will be offering a Q&A session on December 12th from 2-3pm in Klaus 1616E.

Please plan to attend or ask a friend to bring any questions you may have, and we will be more than happy to address them.

Thank you,

Mike Luttrell, Jr.
IT Operations Manager
Technology Services Organization
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
404-385-6889
http://support.cc.gatech.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Luttrell, Mike
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 3:53 PM
To: 'phd-list@cc.gatech.edu'; 'cocms-list@cc.gatech.edu'; 'undergraduates@cc.gatech.edu'
Cc: Allred, Adam; Bowens, Mashan; Carpenter, Randy; Chandler, James; Conley, Doug; Crowell, Brian; Davis, Debbie; Gordon, Tonya; Huneycutt, Chad; Kriigel, James; Mercer, David Allen; Poole, Brian; Poole, Russ; Pugh, Nyree A; Ross, Daniel; Smith, Uwanna; Tabb, Phillip Yancey; Wan, Peter; Watson, Keith; 'cc-tso-availability@lists.gatech.edu'; 'lab-managers@cc.gatech.edu'; 'faculty@cc.gatech.edu'; 'staff@cc.gatech.edu'
Subject: Student Zimbra E-mail Migration to OIT

Good Afternoon,

TSO is preparing for the migration of existing student CoC Zimbra (email2.cc.gatech.edu) users to the OIT Zimbra service on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 10:00AM to Tuesday, December 24th at 6:00PM.

We plan to minimize the downtime and inconvenience for users by doing the following:

1. We will install onto the OIT provisioning system all personal aliases for students from the CoC NIS server prior to the migration, so that users can use an alternate From: value in the Zimbra web client (eg. @cc or @gatech).

2. We will export Zimbra filters from the CoC server for users Thursday, December 11th before the migration period and provide them to OIT for prior installation; users should not add or change filters from Wednesday, December 10th until the migration is completed.

3. We will update the active CoC aliases on December 17th at 10:00AM for accounts being migrated to point to the OIT Zimbra address, so that users may access any new mail via the OIT Zimbra server while their older messages are being migrated.

4. After December 17th at 10:00AM, users will not be able to access their existing mail on the CoC Zimbra server after we reset the account passwords to begin the migration. If you have messages which you may need to refer to before the mailbox migration completes, you can forward them to your OIT mailbox so that you can continue to reference such information.

5. We anticipate that with the number of users being migrated, that we should be finished with migrations no later than December 24th at 6:00PM. A message will be sent to each user after completion of their mailbox migration, so that they know when to start looking for their older messages and folders.

6. Timestamps for migrated messages will be intact as long as the source message has an RFC-822-compatible timestamp, otherwise unparseable dates in source messages will result in the current date/time being used in the mailbox index.

7. Priority indicators for migrated messages may not be intact after the migration, because most mail clients do not use a standard for setting this variable.

8. Users need to have their login and passwords tested for their GT account ahead of time to avoid any complications in reaching their OIT Zimbra mail account.

9. If you have a global forward currently set in your CoC Zimbra account, this forward will not be migrated for two reasons. The first reason is to avoid any possible mail loops. The second reason is to not break any current mail routing that a user may have for CoC mail vs. campus (OIT) mail. You can set the forward in OIT Zimbra account at any time.

10. TSO is readily available via phone, mail and web to answer your questions or concerns with the migration. The FAQs for client configurations are located at: http://info.my.gatech.edu/

Thank you,

Mike Luttrell, Jr.
IT Operations Manager
Technology Services Organization
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
404-385-6889
http://support.cc.gatech.edu

Student Zimbra E-mail Migration to OIT - Question and Answer Session

Meeting Details

  • Date and Time: 12/12/2008 2:00 PM - 2:25 PM
  • Location: KACB Atrium
  • Agenda: Provide a Q&A session regarding the Student Zimbra Email Migration to OIT

Attendees

  • Adam Allred (presenter), Brian Crowell (transcriber), 3 students

Presented Information

  • On Wednesday, December 17, 2008, at 10:00 AM, TSO Operations will modify entries in the aliases file on the mailheads to point to the GT addresses of the accounts that are being migrated. There are 2-3,000 accounts that can be migrated. After 10:00 AM, new email will be forwarded to GT.
  • Imapsync, the main tool being used during the migration, was described.
  • Email accounts will actually be moved to a migration domain. After 10:00 AM, authentication will no longer work on the production domain. Temporary passwords will be set for the migration. The migration will be performed on each account, 5 accounts at a time. The script does this and writes a log file.
    • This will not affect access to email in home directories
  • There is code that emails users after the migration, but the return codes are not accurate enough. During the faculty migration, some false positives were returned, so this has been turned off. We will not be able to send out completion emails until the entire migration is done. While we recognize that this is not ideal, we do not have a better method at this time.
  • We will move all mail folders, not just the inbox. The folders will be moved as is, maintaining the folder structure. During the migration to the two CoC Zimbra servers, there were challenges that prevented us from moving anything other than the inbox, such as NFS mounts.
  • Actual migration of the email varies and depends on the size of the messages. From the previous migration, we saw average transfers of 10-15,000 messages per hour. At that rate, the migration should be completed in 3-4 days, but additional time was added to the maintenance window for any issues that might arise.
  • All communications for the migration will be done over SSL, including the transfer of the email. Passwords are not passed in the clear. Additionally, the migration uses a local password on both ends, so there is no network-based authentication.

Questions & Answers