Simply Migrate - Collecting Data for Import

This article contains information on exporting, collecting, and submitting legacy email data to Mimecast, including guidelines, acceptable formats, tools, and professional services to ensure compliance and a successful migration process.

Once the prerequisites have been met, and you've reviewed both the initial emails from the Legacy Archive Data Management team and this guide, you need to export and collect copies of your historical email according to the mandatory standards and requirements detailed below. The existing email system or files should continue to be accessible to users until the data is available in the Mimecast archive. Therefore only copy the data, and do not remove access to it during the Legacy Archive Data Management process.

Should you require assistance with the collection of legacy data, contact your Mimecast representative to inquire about Intelligent Data Migration services.

It may be beneficial to prevent additional data from being added to the existing email system, as new emails are processed by Mimecast and are available in the archive.

To ensure that your Mimecast account contains a complete archive of all email content, it is important to provide all historic messages sent or received before the Journal Date (the date journaling is configured within your environment and on the Mimecast platform). Mimecast archives email that flows through the service or is uploaded via journaling. It doesn't import historic email that already exists in a mailbox, user email file, or archive system. The messages in these locations need to be imported.

Exporting Data

Before exporting data, decide which file and message formats are best for your data. You can find out more about each option by clicking the links below:

• PST Data
• Zipped EML Data (must be zipped)

The decision may also be based on the export method or tool you will be using, which is explored in more detail below.

Professional Services

Mimecast Professional Services helps ensure a fast, accurate, and secure migration of legacy archive data from third party archives to the Mimecast archive.  Mimecast certified professionals use proven methodologies and tools to analyze, prepare, safely extract the data, and ensure its successful inclusion into the Mimecast archive. For more information, contact your Mimecast representative.

Benefits of this service include:

• eDiscovery capabilities to categorize data and only export and ingest what is needed.
• Chain of custody reports for compliance.
• Protection for messages under legal hold.

File Accessibility

We can process PSTs that are accessible to supported Microsoft Outlook versions (e.g. Outlook 2016 or before). All files and folders provided to us must be accessible to Outlook or Windows from within the Windows system, without requiring any additional software or permissions. Zipped and / or password protected PST files, or folders and PST files with the "read only" file attribute set cannot be accepted and are reported to you.

Backup

Ensure you retain a copy of the data once it is exported, collected, prepared, and ready to be provided to us. This backup should be retained for the duration of the Legacy Archive Data Management process until the ingested data has been verified. We may request another copy of the data in the event of critical hardware faults or FTP copy issues that have resulted in the data being inaccessible.

We take no responsibility for data loss or re-exporting data if this backup cannot be provided.

Common Export Options

We cannot recommend a specific solution for collecting your data. Multiple systems and solutions are available for this purpose, and these are largely dependent on your organization's infrastructure. Any information provided in this article cannot be verified for your specific environment, and it is important to test any tools before selecting one for your data collection.

Many email and archive systems include a bulk export feature, and several third party utilities may also be used. Each has different limitations that need to be investigated, tested, and considered in conjunction with the Legacy Archive Data Management requirements.

Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Outlook

Outlook 2007 and 2010 can export a mailbox or use PSTs up to 50GBs.

Other Tools

Some available methods and related links are listed below, in no particular order:

Microsoft Powershell	Other Export Solutions	Network PST Collection Tools
Exchange 2019 Exchange 2016 Exchange 2013	PST Accelerator MessageOps Mailscavator Migration Wiz	Microsoft PST Capture Fortisware PST Finder Commvault PST Discovery Sherpa Attender

The list of methods and solutions above is not fully comprehensive. Mimecast recommends that you research an appropriate solution for your environment.

Next Step: Provide Data

Once the data has been collected, it can be submitted to us for processing.