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NetMail 3.5 to GroupWise 7 Migration
E. Axel LarssonDrew [email protected] EMEA Conference - January 2007
Agenda
Background and Motivation GroupWise 7 System Design Migration Process and Timetable Tools and Integrations
Some background…
Drew University Located in northern New Jersey Consists of a College of Liberal Arts, Theological,
and Graduate school Approximately 2,500 student FTEs Largely residential Standard laptop program for all CLA students
Highly managed student computers Enterprise services on student notebooks.
History
Drew has provided basic email service to all students, faculty, and staff since 1989.. DEC All-In-One (OpenVMS) through 1998 PMDF IMAP w/ Netscape Communicator 4.x +
IMP Webmail (1998 – 2002) Novell NetMail IMAP w/ Mozilla Mail + NetMail
WebAccess (2002 – 2006) Today: Novell GroupWise 7 SP1 w/ Windows and
Cross-Platform clients + WebAccess
Previous NetMail Deployment
Originally on Solaris (2001-2003) Sun Enterprise 450
Migrated to Red Hat AS 2.1 in Summer 2003 Single-server, HP DL 360 G3 300GB of Fibre-attached SAN storage Supported all employee and student mail, alumni
forwarding addresses, and mailing lists. Symantec CarrierScan for Anti-Virus
GWGuardian Anti-Spam/AV added in 2004 Deployed on Windows Server 2003
Why Switch?
Change in administration and change in expectations… Calendars Mobile device support
NetMail futures… Insufficient information / transparency re: Hula to
make a business decision. Already contemplating a change to client
software for existing solution. Mozilla Suite to Mozilla Thunderbird
Why GroupWise?
Relevant experience already on hand… Novell Cluster Services for 3 years GroupWise trial within technology area for 1 year Confidence in our ability to support the solution
BlackBerry support recently available. GW 7 client compared favorably with Outlook Cost containment
No additional software licensing budget allocated for this project.
Administration cost needed to stay at 1 FTE or less
Pilot project (Fall 2005)
Moved all technology staff to GroupWise. President’s Office migrated.
Most pressing need was getting the presidential calendar in GW with appropriate proxy access for his staff.
BlackBerry Enterprise Server rollout. Technology staff. President. Selected cabinet-level staff.
Moving forward – Formationof a GroupWise task-force. Representatives from all technology areas:
Computing and Network Services Systems Administration Enterprise Applications User Support / Helpdesk
Instructional Technology Services Training Documentation
Administrative Computing
Objectives
Use this as an opportunity to improve email service levels. Implement clustering for fault-tolerance
Streamline the migration process Self-service tools. Copious training and support resources
Give people a reason to switch Greater enterprise feature set, calendars, mobile
devices, etc.
GroupWise System Design
Best practice reference: “Success with Clustering GroupWise 7” - Gregg
Hinchman 2 node NetWare 6.5 SP5 cluster built for pilot
in Fall 2005 Standalone GW system used by University
Technology migrated. 1 PO + 1 domain. New primary domain, GWIA, WebAccess, and
Employee PO added. 2 nodes and 2 student POs added in March
GroupWise System Design Final layout:
4 nodes, 9 cluster resources One primary domain / MTA Two GWIAs / domains
Internet mail (SMTP) GWIA GWIA to support IMAP/SMTP clients
One WebAccess agent / application / domain GroupWise Messenger Four Post Offices
University Technology PO (100 accounts - 50GB) Employee PO (900 accounts, 500 used regularly - 150GB, 1gb
mail quotas) 2 Student POs (1,500 accounts each - 150GB each, 200mb mail
quotas) GW agents run from clustered volumes and in protected
address spaces
GroupWise System Design
Additional servers and services HP DL360 G3 running Win2K3 for GWGuardian 2 VMWare ESX virtual machines
BlackBerry Enterprise Server, GWMonitor service, and IDM Remote Loader for GW
SLES 9 Postfix / Mailman server Replacement for NetMail listserv LDAP alias replacement for @alumni.drew.edu forwarding
Coming soon / in progress GroupWise Mobile Server GW WebAccess migration to SLES 10
GroupWise System Design IDM Integration
Where to run the driver? IDM engines running on SLES 9 servers GW driver needs filesystem access to GW domain DB.
Remote mount from a linux box is not supported. Solution - Remote Loader service on Windows box,
domain DB access over NCP with Client32. Policy decisions
Creation - based upon aux class attribute Placement
Employee / Technology POs - based on group membership Student POs - Random placement
A Phased Deployment
Phase 1 – Early Adopters March 1, 2006 – May 1, 2006 New users were still set up on NetMail by default. Users could “opt-in” through a self-service web
site. Faculty/staff only. Migration tools available:
Transend Migrator (third-party) for moving IMAP mail and Mozilla address books.
University Technology student employees moved to GW for training and support purposes.
A Phased Deployment
Phase 2 – Full Deployment May 1, 2006 – November 1, 2006 New users created on GroupWise. New computers come with GW client preinstalled
– all existing images updated. Self-service tools available, GW now available for
students. Enhanced migration tools available: Home-grown server-side IMAP copier Home-grown Mozilla address book converter.
A Phased Deployment
Phase 3 – Compulsory Migration All remaining GW accounts turned on November
1, 2006. Old NetMail system remains available for
migration of old email messages only. Users have until March 1, 2007 to retrieve old
messages. Phase 4 – NetMail discontinued
March 1, 2007 – Old email server decommissioned.
Tools to help with the Migration Self-service account activation
Web-based “wizard” points user to docs, client install instructions, etc. and allows for one-click account activation.
Sets up forwarding on the old NetMail system. Creates GW account by toggling aux class attribute which
triggers IDM driver. Self-service address book converter
Converts exported Mozilla address books into a .vcf format which can be imported into GW.
Web-based Developed by a student employee in PHP
Tools to help with the Migration Self-service mail copy utility.
Moves users mail from NetMail to GroupWise using IMAP
Web-based Users are presented with a list of folders to migrate Actual migration is submitted and performed as a
background task. Users don’t need to keep browser open or wait while
migration proceeds. Long-running daemon process maintains a pool of IMAP
copier worker processes to complete migration jobs. Developed by a student employee in PHP
Aftermath…
Customers who were asking for the GW featureset have been very pleased with the results
Surprised that compulsory migration (Nov. 1st) did not trigger a substantial increase in Helpdesk calls.
Some complaints about performance of the Mac client.
Unanticipated demand for automatic mail forwarding High GroupWise system reliability.
Minor issues with the cluster servers - Java related ABENDs on the WebAccess node.
