When Quest's migration tools are deployed by Quest Professional Services, Quest Partners or other consultants, Quest strongly encourages the use of Quest Messagestats in support of the migration effort.
If the product has not already been purchased for the migration effort, those interested in using the tool in this fashion and/or have any additional questions in regards to the following information/scenario should contact their Account Manager (or Partner Account Manager, if applicable) at Quest.
Four Steps Towards Planning a Successful Email Migration
Careful and thorough planning is crucial to the success of a migration. These MessageStats reports correspond to the Reports referred to in Joel Blaiberg’s tech brief: Four Steps Towards Planning a Successful Email Migration.
Step 1. Inventory Your Current Environment
Listing all your Assets
Inventory Summary
Provides summarized information for each Exchange organization, including information about the number of sites and routing groups, servers, storage groups, private stores, public stores, mailboxes, distribution lists, and public folders. Each result permits drill down to a more detailed Inventory store report.
Inventory - Servers
Provides a list of servers in a Site or Administrative Group, and provides information about that server, including the Exchange version, and the number of mailboxes, public stores, and private stores. Using MessageStats Regions with this report simplifies modeling of server consolidation scenarios.
Monitoring Access to Target Assets by Source Accounts
Mailbox Delegates
The Mailbox Delegates report provides a list of the mailboxes that have a delegate assigned to them and lists each of the one or more delegates.
Understanding Your Mobile Devices and Users
BlackBerry
The Total BlackBerry User Growth report provides a graph indicating the growth of BlackBerry users over time.
Windows Mobile
Shows the growth in the number of Windows Mobile devices used within the organization.
Understanding Your Source Lotus Notes Environment
Mailboxes
As an aid to mail database management, this report lists the Lotus Notes mailboxes in a Domino domain and provides detailed information about each mailbox. The report shows the physical path for each mailbox file, and includes metrics such as the number and volume of stored items and the mailbox maximum size. It also shows when each mailbox was created and when it was last modified.
Step 2. Analyze Usage
Understanding Current Capacity and Storage Usage and Trends
Exchange Capacity
The Exchange Capacity Executive Summary report provides composite information about the components of an Exchange environment that impacts storage, including mailbox metrics and quota metrics. An overview of system capacity is critical to ensuring service level expectations are met.
Storage – Servers Summary
The Servers report provides the total volume sizes, total store size, amount of the volume that is used, and percentage of the volume that is used. This report provides two graphs; one shows the aggregate size of information stores by server, and the second provides the percentage of space used at the server level. If the period of the report is greater than one day, the first graph provides a trend of the information stores over time, and the second graph shows a trend of the percentage of space used over the period.
Understanding Mailbox and Mobile Device Usage and Trends
Mailbox Growth by Organization
The Mailbox Growth report allows administrators to see growth trends in the number of mailboxes within an organization over time. The data can also be presented at the server level.
Assessing Current Mail Server Traffic
Server Activity Summary
The Server Summary report presents the physical messages a server handles, and compares the mailbox-generated activity with system-generated activity. Report architects and administrators can determine the percentage of time consumed by user activity compared to the percentage of time used for system overhead work. The comparison can then be used to balance services throughout the Exchange organization.
Identifying Top Email Users
Top Mailbox Sizes
Provides a list of mailboxes and their associated sizes. The information in this report comes directly from Exchange mailbox statistics. It is not gathered through the tracking logs.
Top Senders
The Top Senders and Receivers by Messages report provides the top email senders and receivers over a specific period of time, grouped by the total number of messages sent or received.
Step 3. Identify Unused Assets
Finding Inactive Mailboxes
Inventory – Inactive Mailboxes
Provides a list of mailboxes that have not seen activity in the tracking logs during the reporting period.
Lotus Notes Inventory – Inactive Mailboxes
This report identifies the Notes mailboxes that had no user modifications during the selected period. You can review this report as a part of normal mail file maintenance activities. The report shows information about each mailbox including size, the number and volume of items stored, and when the mailbox was last modified by a user.
Finding Shared Resources That Are No Longer Needed
Inventory – Empty Public Folders
Provides a list of inactive public folders that contain no files or folders. NOTE: The content of this report (or specific fields within this report) will be empty by default due to the initial Quest MessageStats gathering configuration. In order to enable the large gatherings required to provide content for this report please see your MessageStats administrator.
Inventory – Distribution Lists
Provides a list of the distribution lists that exist in each Exchange organization. NOTE: The content of this report (or specific fields within this report) will be empty by default due to the initial Quest MessageStats gathering configuration. In order to enable the large gatherings required to provide content for this report please see your MessageStats administrator.
Identifying Invalid or Inactive Mobile Devices
Invalid BlackBerry devices
The Invalid BlackBerry Users report provides a list of users that are configured on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, but do not have a corresponding mailbox configured in Exchange.
Inactive BlackBerry devices
The Inactive BlackBerry Users report provides a list of users whose BlackBerry devices have had no message activity since a specified date.
Inactive Windows Mobile devices
Provides a list of devices that have not been synchronized for a specified number of days.
Step 4. Clean Up Unused Assets
Orphaned Mailboxes
The Orphaned Mailboxes report provides a list of the orphaned mailboxes that exist in your Exchange organization. Orphaned Mailboxes have different definitions in Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000: In Exchange 5.5, an orphaned mailbox consumes space in a given store, but there is no associated object in the Exchange Directory. In Exchange 2000, an orphaned mailbox consumes space in a given store, but there is no associated object in the Active Directory.
Empty Public Folders
Provides a list of inactive public folders that contain no files or folders. NOTE: The content of this report (or specific fields within this report) will be empty by default due to the initial Quest MessageStats gathering configuration. In order to enable the large gatherings required to provide content for this report please see your MessageStats administrator.
