Licensing server and some considerations when performing Exchange data migration (61582)

During mail data migration (synchronization) agents are reporting various licensing issues, reporting network path was not found or access to registry was denied. In a migration without trust access to licensing server also becomes an issue. What can be done to avoid such issues?

By default the console machine is being selected to be the licensing server.  

However this can be easily changed, when installing the tool or during the migration.

To change the licensing server in EMW or QMM navigate to Tools | Options | License.

Changing the licensing server in the middle of migration doesn't negatively affect the migration.

The server can be either selected or typed in manually.

For more details please see attached screenshots. The article applies to QMM Exchange Data part only, to migration of mail related data.  QMM AD licensing part works differently and no action is needed to change the licensing behavior there.

When using QMM or EMW and when processing a mailbox for the very first time only the source agents query the licensing server in order to determine if a license is available for the particular mailbox.  Knowing this it makes perfect sense to make a source computer to be a licensing server.  In this case there will be no need to have a trust or to have name resolution working and if the service account has local admin rights on the Exchange server there will be no problem when accessing the registry of the licensing server either.

The selected machine doesn't need to have the license being located locally. Once specified this machine will be solely used as centralized storage when counting used licenses for migrated mailboxes.