Migrate Barracuda to Office 365

User Query

Barracuda has made a name for itself in the field of archiving appliances for Exchange online and Office 365. However, for many users, these hardware appliances or even a virtual solution from Barracuda appear to be expensive. Office 365, on the other hand, supports in-place hold and enables you to export mailboxes as PST files. Many Barracuda users find it difficult to backup their data or migrate to other solutions such as Office 365, G Suite and Exchange. It's also worth noting that the Barracuda archive comes in two flavors which are ArchiveOne and Message Archiver. You cannot directly migrate the data from the Message Archiver without exporting your data to PST format. Due to these limitations, we get requests asking how to migrate data to Office 365, which we describe in this comprehensive guide.

"We want to migrate from Barracuda Message Archiver to Office 365 as soon as possible and would like to replace the former. Barracuda is also duplicating my emails, and despite searching the internet for possible solutions, we were unable to find any concrete method that detailed the process step by step. We are utterly confused and would like to move away from this costly solution if you could assist us." Thanks a lot.

I. Pre migration activities for Barracuda to Office 365 migration

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

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

    

2. 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

3. If you plan to migrate the Barracuda archive 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

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

     Steps to enable archive mailbox in Microsoft 365.

5. 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.

6. 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.

II. How to migrate from Barracuda to Office 365?

You can perform the migration with the following three methods.

1. Migrate Barracuda ArchiveOne to Office 365
2. Migrate Barracuda Message Archiver PST file to Office 365
3. Import the PST file to Office 365 with EdbMails

• 1. Steps to migrate Barracuda ArchiveOne to Microsoft 365

  Note that the ArchiveOne family of products, including ArchiveOne, ArchiveOne for Files, Max Compression, and Access Security Manager, has been phased out as of May 1st, 2018. You can keep using ArchiveOne without the updates, and Barracuda offers a native solution for migrating to Office 365. (Only for Office 365 environments)

  • Step 1: Enable Exchange online from the ArchiveOne Admin console.
  • Step 2: Create an ArchiveOne Admin account user (for service account)
  • Step 3: Create a mailbox for the ArchiveOne Admin user from the Exchange online website
  • Step 4: Migrate the ArchiveOne service account mailbox from on-premises to Office 365
  • Step 5: Configure Exchange online permissions for the ArchiveOne account

  To allow the ArchiveOne service account to access mailboxes in Exchange online, you must use PowerShell commands. Repeat the preceding steps for all user mailboxes created on your Office 365 tenant.

• 2. Steps to migrate Barracuda Message Archiver to Office 365

  Barracuda Message Archiver is an appliance that collects messages for exporting and forwarding. If you're using the Archiver, you'll need to search for the user messages and then export them to Outlook PST format. The PST can then be imported to Microsoft 365 from the network upload.

  • Step 1: Ensure that you have administrator or auditor privileges for the Message Archiver.
  • Step 2: Select Scheduled export if you need to export recently archived data or On-Demand export if you need to export selected items.
  • Step 3: Identify the data to be exported by running an archive search from the Search page.
  • Step 4: Export the data as an Outlook PST file with the ‘Export Messages’ option.
  • Step 5: Import the PST into Office 365 using Microsoft’s network upload option.

  You can also configure a Server Message Block (SMB) on the Message Archiver to store the PST for a set period of time and check the status of the export on the Tasks tab of the Search page.

  As we can see from the previous steps, both the aforementioned methods have drawbacks and are highly technical in nature. The ArchiveOne method, which uses PowerShell scripts to grant Full Access Permissions, is already out of date. If you want to migrate the PST to Microsoft 365, you must use Azure AzCopy and manually upload the PST files. This is not only a time consuming method but it is also unintuitive.

• 3. Steps to migrate Barracuda to Office 365 with EdbMails

  EdbMails migration software can help you directly import the PST files from Barracuda to Office 365 without requiring any technical expertise. Another advantage of using EdbMails is that you can open the PST, view the file contents, and migrate the mail items to Office 365 without Outlook.

  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 technique as ‘PST Recovery and migration’ in the main window

  • Step 1: Export the PST from Barracuda Mail Archive Export your data from the Barracuda Mail Archive as a PST file
  • Step 2: Select the PST file to migrate to Office 365Locate the PST file from your computer, select and add it in EdbMails

    

  • Step 3: Select the mailboxes and connect to the Office 365 tenant
    • Select the mailboxes and folders from the left panel to migrate to Office 365.
    • Click ‘Migrate to Office 365’ to set up the connection with the target server.

    

    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 4: 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 5: Map the mailboxes and migrate PST to Office 365

    Map the mailboxes and start the migration from Barracuda Archive to Office 365. 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!

To wrap it all up

We described three methods to migrate from Barracuda to Office 365. The first method is to migrate Barracuda ArchiveOne to Office 365, which is no longer supported. The Message Archiver method can export your data to PST, but you have to manually upload the PST file to Office 365. The third method is to migrate with EdbMails that can assist you to directly transfer the PST from Barracuda to Office 365. The application is an automatic tool that performs a direct migration between the source and target, can map mailboxes, set impersonation rights and provides advanced filter settings to customize the operation based on your requirements.

• Videos - PST to Office 365 migration
• Videos - PST to Exchange migration