Quest Reporter tool and how it can be used before and during a migration (4352464)

Quest Reporter tool and how it can be used before and during a migration

When Quest's migration tools are deployed by Quest Professional Services, Quest Partners or other consultants, Quest strongly encourages the use of Quest Reporter 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.

Before beginning with the migration one needs to examine the source and target domains thoroughly. Quest documentation (QMM Tips and Tricks) contains this information:

Environment Assessment and Planning

The first step in migration is to assess your environment and design an appropriate migration plan. The following tools can help:

Quest Reporter—Reports on the current Active Directory environment and assists with planning migration activities in the target Active Directory forest or domain. For more information, visit www.quest.com/reporter/.

 

Use Reporter's FSMO Roles report to help you determine FSMO placement.

 

Handling Disabled and Inactive Accounts

Migration Manager can automatically filter out disabled accounts during migration. We recommend you use this option and not bring disabled accounts to Active Directory.

You might also want to filter out user accounts that have not been logged on to for a long period of time and disable them prior to migration. To locate such accounts, use the following reports in Quest Reporter:

Accounts that have never logged on – Displays user accounts that have never logged on

Inactive Accounts – Shows all accounts that are disabled or deemed inactive during the time period you specify

 

Handling Accounts with Duplicate Names

Although Migration Manager reports on duplicate accounts during the migration session and allows you rename, merge, or skip them on the fly, the best practice is to handle duplicates before migration. You should find duplicate user and group names and determine which accounts belong to the same person and which do not. If two accounts, source and target, have the same name and belong to the same person, they should be merged during migration. If not, you should either rename one of them or skip them during migration.

To find duplicate user and group names, use the Duplicate Users and Duplicate Groups reports from Quest Reporter.

 

Below are some of the examples of possible reports, just to give an idea which kind of information can b useful during a migration.

Reporter, for example, can be used to find object with identical (duplicate) values, and not only, it can look for duplicates by.

• SamAccountName
• Alias (mailNickname)
• DisplayName
• CN
• Name
• First Name / Last Name combinations (RUS/Name Policy validation)

 

Mismatched attributes Reports:

• Source Alias <> CN <> SamAccountName
• Source Name <> DisplayName

 

Matched Object Reports (Source ObjectGUID = Target Matching Attribute):

• AltRecipient (which object has it set)
• TargetAddress set (to find all objects where this attribute has been set or removed after a mailbox was moved to another database)
• Bad / duplicate matching attributes
• Source Mail attribute <> Source Primary SMTP address
• Source Primary SMTP address <> Target Primary SMTP address
• Source DisplayName <> Target DisplayName
• SamAccountName matches SamAccountName (and/or Email Address and/or SIDHistory) but Matching Attributes don’t match up

 

Miscellaneous:

• Groups with hidden membership
• Groups hidden from the GAL
• Mailboxes hidden from the GAL

 

Linked Reports to the QMMEX database:

• Mailboxes on the wrong Source / Target server /
• Mailboxes not in a Collection

Reporter Domain Migration Assessment Report Pack

There are a number of reports in Quest Reporter that are very useful for performing AD pre-migration assessments. Until now, those reports have been in a variety of report containers. These reports are now collected in the FREE Reporter Domain Migration Assessment pack and include reporting on information such as:Accounts that have never logged on and inactive accounts- may not need to be migrated. omputer account status– discover “dead” computer accounts that do not need to be migrated. Duplicate users and groups- merge or rename some of these objects during the migration. File shares by computer– might require a permissions update as part of the migration process. This is a FREE report pack Attached. Contact your Account Manager with questions. Note: while the Report Pack itself is free it still requires a licensed install of Reporter to run.