Zimbra Migration Overview
There are three key stages to most migrations:
1. Setting up mailboxes, aliases, distribution lists and any alias domains.
Start by adding the Zimbra service via the Control Panel – after the primary domain and any alias domains are provisioned within Zimbra, you should set-up the mailboxes, aliases and distribution lists using the Zimbra Administrator. Zimbra is configured such that emails, even internal ones, are sent via separate smart hosts which perform MX lookup on all outgoing email, therefore you can safely perform these steps without fear of interruption to the live email system.
NB. Depending on the method of migration you may have to create some or all of the above – for example the Exchange Migration Wizard will create user accounts as well as copying data.
2. Importing emails, contacts, calendar, tasks, signatures, filter rules and other settings from the source system to the new.
There are various methods for migrating data including tools provided by Zimbra and third party solutions both open source and commercial. If existing mailboxes are hosted online, mail migration can be done automatically, however in many cases migration will be a case of importing PST files. Zimbra provide a PST Import Wizard which is the only supported method for migrating PST file data – do not drag and drop or use the Outlook import tool – more information on using the PST Import Wizard.
Recommended data migration tools and techniques:
- PST Migration Wizard (email, cal, contacts, tasks)
- Exchange Migration Wizard (mailboxes, email, cal, contacts, tasks)
- Imapsync (email)
- Get External Mail facility in Zimbra webmail (email)
- Import tool in Zimbra webmail (email, cal, contacts, tasks – depending on source format)
- Scripted imports (email, cal, contacts, tasks, filter rules, signatures)