BigRock to Office 365 migration

Reasons for BigRock to Office 365 migration

Despite the fact that BigRock offers many features such as Global Address Book, IMAP Sync, Distribution Lists, SSL Certificate support, and many others, it still lags behind Office 365's dedicated and integrated email suite for the following reasons.

1. BigRock is primarily focused on web hosting and domain registration, so its email interface is simple for many businesses compared to Microsoft 365.
2. Office 365 has a much collaborative and dedicated email service with Public folder, Archive and Shared Mailbox facility making it ideal for teams and organizations.
3. In addition, it includes SharePoint, OneDrive storage, Yammer and other apps integrated with the same license.
4. Office 365 comes with 50GB mailbox storage as opposed to BigRock’s Advanced and Business plans.
5. Office 365 is also integrated with Word, Excel, Outlook on desktop making it easily accessible from anywhere.

User Query

Many users who are planning to migrate to Office 365 have their domain with BigRock and would like to benefit from a more robust email application for their communication needs. Given the complexities involved in transferring large amounts of data between cloud services, this appears to be a daunting task in the absence of guidance and support. Many people have asked if there is a step-by-step guide for migrating to Office 365 in the simplest way possible. As a result, we provide two migration methods that outline the entire operation step by step.

" We have a BigRock website domain and are stuck with the email account that comes with it. We are now planning to migrate to Office 365, and after researching the migration techniques, we are unsure where to begin. We have come across frequent terms of adding MX records and proving the identity of our domain names. Could anyone please advise us on how to migrate, even if using a suitable tool? Thanks "

How to plan migration from BigRock?

Before you actually start with the operation, you need to have a proper plan and ensure that you are prepared for the migration. Here is a quick checklist of items for your convenience.

1. Decide if you want to retain the same domain on BigRock or change to another hosting provider.
2. Decide if you want to migrate your data all at once or in stages.
3. Create a CSV file with a complete list of mailboxes to be migrated along with the user credentials.
4. Verify if the CSV file format and user credentials are correct.
5. Make a complete backup of all the mailboxes and export large attachments or files to your local drive.
6. Remove unused and unnecessary mailboxes on the source.
7. Inform the end users and stakeholders about the migration plan and the upcoming changes.
8. Select an appropriate Office 365 licensing plan and assign licenses to user mailboxes.
9. Perform a test migration to ensure everything works as expected.

I. Pre migration activities for BigRock to Office 365 migration

1. Make sure you have admin access on the source and target server

   The admin account that has all the necessary permissions to migrate mailboxes on behalf of all the users in your organization. Also assign the Organization Management role group and impersonation rights to the admin user on Office 365.

2. Create a list of users in a CSV file, which you want to migrate from BigRock.
3. Find the name of your source email server from an email client
4. Purchase a suitable Office 365 licensing plan. You can also sign up for a 30 day free trial and decide to go with a suitable one later. Compare Office 365 business plans and Compare Office 365 enterprise plans
5. Create Office 365 mailboxes and assign licenses to them

     Add users and assign licenses to Office 365 users

     Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts

6. If you plan to migrate your mailboxes to Office 365 Public folders, ensure that you create and configure the Public folder mailboxes on the target server.

    Create Office 365 Public folder and assign mailbox user

7. Similarly, if you want to migrate mailboxes to Office 365 In-Place archive, enable them from the admin center.

    Steps to enable archive mailbox in Microsoft 365.

8. If you have a custom email domain from the source which you want to retain and receive emails to, you must add and verify the domain on Office 365.

    Steps to add a custom domain to Office 365 and steps to add DNS records to connect your domain.

9. Configure Office 365 to send and receive large messages.

    Follow the steps to increase the message size on Office 365 to 150MB. See message size limits on Office 365 for more information.

How to migrate from BigRock to Office 365?

You can perform the migration with the following three methods.

1. Migrate BigRock to Office 365 from the Exchange admin center (EAC)
2. Migrate mailboxes directly to O365 with EdbMails IMAP migration

BigRock supports the IMAP protocol for email access. As a result, you have two options: add your email account to Outlook, export the PST and migrate the PST file to Office 365, or use the IMAP server details to create a migration endpoint in the Exchange admin center. Another alternative is to use EdbMails, which is an automated tool to migrate your emails to O365.

Steps to migrate BigRock to Office 365 from EAC

• Step 1: Create an Office 365 tenant account and assign licenses to user mailboxes
• Step 2: Make sure you login to the source and account as global administrator
• Step 3: Verify your BigRock domain by adding TXT record and TTL values
• Step 4: Export list of user mailboxes from BigRock’s Control panel
• Step 5: Also note down the IMAP server details of your BigRock email
• Step 6: From the Microsoft admin center create migration endpoint
• Step 7: Upload the CSV report from Step 4 and create a migration batch
• Step 8: Start BigRock to Office 365 migration and allow for mail synchronization
• Step 9: Add DNS records (MX records) to point to Microsoft's servers
• Step 10: Stop email synchronization and delete the migration batch

The disadvantage of the native migration method is that each step requires manual verification, which is not very intuitive. There is little help and support if any steps are incorrect or something does not work as expected. In addition, it necessitates extensive technical knowledge and is unsuitable for large data migrations.

Steps to migrate BigRock to Office 365 with EdbMails

EdbMails IMAP migration can help you easily migrate your emails from BigRock to Office 365 without any manual work. It assigns impersonation rights for Office 365 automatically and can even map mailboxes. It has built-in filter options to help customize the migration workflow and supports secure modern OAuth 2.0 authentication for login.

Download EdbMails and install the application on any computer that is connected to the source and target environment. You can also perform the migration operation by installing EdbMails on a non-Exchange computer.

  See a detailed list of EdbMails system requirements for IMAP migration.

Launch the application and click ‘Login’ or ‘Start Your Free Trial’Login to the application (if you have purchased a license and already have the username and password). The free trial version allows you to migrate 30 items from every folder of the source account to the target.

Select the migration method as ‘IMAP migration’ in the main window

• Step 1: Connect to the BigRock server with the IMAP connection

  Get your BigRock account's IMAP connection details before you migrate, which is located in the BigRock Control Panel under DNS settings. After you've obtained them, fill out the details with the information shown.

  • HostName/IP Address: mail.yourdomainname.com (Example: abc.bigrock.in)
  • Port: 993 with SSL/TLS enabled (If you have SSL for your IMAP connection)
  • Email address and password associated with your account.

  

  If you want to migrate multiple mailboxes, select ‘Multiple (bulk) Users/Accounts Migration’. Download the sample CSV file from EdbMails and fill in the required details such as mailbox name, password, host name and port. Load the CSV file into the application and verify the list mailboxes to continue.

    See steps to connect to single and multiple users in EdbMails IMAP migration

  

• Step 2: Select the mailboxes from BigRock to migrate to Office 365

  Following a successful connection, EdbMails loads all of your mailboxes, folders, and items, which you can access on the left side.

  • Select the mailboxes and folders to migrate.
  • Click ‘Migrate to Office 365’ to set up the connection with the target server.

      See tips to optimize IMAP migration to Exchange online

  

  Tip: If this is the first time you’re migrating with EdbMails, the migration is a full migration. On subsequent migrations from the same source to the target, the migration is incremental to prevent duplicate items.

  EdbMails provides the following additional options to help you customize the migration task.

  • Additional Include and Exclude Filter Options
  • Filter emails by Date: Migrate to Office 365 by applying the Date filter
  • Filter emails by Size: Exclude emails from migration larger than a specified size.

• Step 3: Connect to target Office 365 as Global Admin User

  EdbMails supports both modern and classic authentication. Connect to the target server by selecting Auto or Manual registration for modern authentication and the connection method as Mailboxes, Public folder or Archive Mailbox. You can also connect to the mailboxes by loading a CSV file of users from the Office 365 tenant.

    Connect to Office 365 server using secure modern authentication

• Step 4: Map the respective folders from the source to the target

  The mapping activity in EdbMails can automatically match and map the mailboxes and folders between BigRock and Office 365. This activity saves time when you’re migrating a large number of mailboxes.

• Step 5: Start the migration from BigRock to Office 365 and verify the operation

  Start and monitor the migration operation after you complete the mailbox mapping. Finally, verify the count of migrated emails, folders and mailbox items with EdbMails text-based log report. You can also pause and resume the migration.

    If you require further assistance, contact EdbMails 24x7 support. Try the free trial version today to start the migration!

III. Post-migration tasks

Step 1: Update the MX records to point to Office 365

If you have not done this step previously, change the DNS records known as MX records to enable and receive email messages on the target Office 365 server. After you complete this step, you will be able to receive emails from your customers and partners in your Office 365 account. In addition to this setup, configure the Autodiscover record to allow Outlook to connect to the migrated mailboxes.

Step 2: Create a new Outlook profile for users in the new domain

Configure and recreate the Outlook profile for each user in your domain if Outlook has problems connecting to Office 365 mailboxes.

Migration troubleshooting

  See the migration troubleshooting guide for possible solutions related to common errors. For more information on EdbMails IMAP migration, see frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Summing up in a nutshell

BigRock is a well-known provider of domain names and web hosting services. However, the email included with the hosting plan is limited to basic needs and is ineffective as businesses grow in size. In such a case, it is necessary to migrate to other services, such as Office 365, which offers cutting-edge collaboration features and caters to a diverse set of business users. Manual migration methods fail to support larger data sets and are extremely technical in nature. EdbMails is a Microsoft partnered tool designed specifically for handling migrations from BigRock to Office 365. It can relieve you of the complexities and enables you to transfer all of your data in a few steps. Its graphical interface also ensures that you migrate with as little effort as possible.