If your organization is considering migrating from Exchange Server 2013 to Exchange server 2016 then you’ve come to the right place. What one needs additionally along with proper check-lists and endpoints when planning for such large scale changes is an Exchange server 2013 migration guide to walk you through the entire process.
Before heading over to the actual topic of Exchange 2013 to 2016 migration, let us look at some of the reasons why you might want to consider upgrading your existing Exchange Server 2013 deployment to Exchange Server 2016 and the differences between these two.
Architectural changes: The Mailbox role and Client Access Services (CAS) role are combined into Mailbox server role which performs both the functionalities in Exchange Server 2016. In fact, in Exchange 2016, the available server roles are constrained into just two: The Mailbox Server Role and the Edge Transport Server Role.
Outlook on the web: So Microsoft has decided to finally rename the Outlook web app (OWA), however, it is more than just a name change as the whole interface has been revamped and a slew of new features have been incorporated. Some of the notable additions include support for inline pictures and emojis, improved single line view, link preview, Office 365 app launcher from navigation bar etc.
Exchange Server security: The data loss prevention functionality in Exchange Server 2016 has been improved. It uses many ways to scan the information and data within the Exchange Server message flow and prevents sensitive information from leaking out of an organisation.
Feature enhancements: There has been a lot of improvements to many of the native tools such as the ones that help setup hybrid deployments for Office 365, Azure AD tools etc. Ediscovery, Archiving and Search are the other areas that have seen notable additions.
An other point worth noting here is that, older versions are vulnerable to security attacks when Microsoft stops the updates, big fixes and support. Now that we’ve established the fact that there are considerable gains to be achieved from upgrading your existing Exchange 2013 deployment to Exchange server 2016, let’s head back to our topic of Exchange 2013 to 2016 migration.
Once you’ve done preparing the environment and taken care of all necessary system requirements of Exchange 2016 deployment, you can head over to the Microsoft Exchange Deployment Assistant and answer a few questions based on your current environment to get a detailed check-list for your Migration project. One of the most employed approach is to set up a CAS coexistence scenario to migrate all services along with mailboxes first and then consequently decommissioning the Exchange Server 2013.
While there is no doubt that manual methods like the one mentioned above can work, there is a big caveat that all of them are rather complex and time consuming. There are a lot of complex terminologies and scripting involved that can be handled well only if you are technically sound. Moreover, even a small mistake can cost you dearly in terms of overhead and being unable to meet your migration goals. If you are looking for a direct and a rather quick Exchange 2013 to 2016 migration method with no downtimes, then it is worth using a professional Exchange Migration utility like the one from EdbMails.
Advantages of using EdbMails to perform Exchange 2013 migration
1. Direct Migration: Direct, secure migration of all your user data from Exchange 2013 to Exchange 2016 without necessitating any coexistence or other intermediary scenarios.
2. No downtime: EdbMails ensures that there is no downtime during Exchange 2013 to 2016 migration. Users can continue with their workflow as usual during the migration operation.
3. Straightforward setup: It is easy to setup your migration project using EdbMails, thanks to its simple and easy to get around GUI. There are no complex power-shell scripting involved and you can complete the whole process in just a few steps.
4. Incremental Migration: Save bandwidth and time as incremental migration capability ensures that only the newly added items or the ones that have not been previously migrated will get migrated and no duplicates will be created on the target server.
5. Granular Migration: Migrate Emails, contacts, tasks, calendar etc from your source Exchange mailbox to target Exchange Server.
Exchange 2013 to 2016 migration using EdbMails
Here’s a step by step guide for migrating Exchange 2013 to 2016 using EdbMails.
Step 1. Downloading and installing the application: Download and install the latest version of EdbMails application on your computer. Double click the EdbMails setup (EdbMailsSetup.exe) file to install the application and follow the instructions that appear to complete the installation.
Step 2. Login to the application: Click on ‘Login‘ or ‘Start Your Free Trial‘ to access the application.
Step 3. Selecting ‘Exchange Migration’: Select the option ‘Live Exchange Migration‘ from the drop down and click ‘Let’s Go‘.
Step 4. Login to Source Live Exchange 2013 server: Exchange server source connection opens the wizard to configure the migration job. There you need to choose the connection option ‘Connect using Global Admin User‘ and select the mailbox-type then click ‘Next‘. Here there are two options to be considered. The ‘Default connection‘ or the ‘Autodiscover’ email option.
- Default Connection: Choose ‘Use Default connection’ and enter the required login credentials like IP address and Exchange Version to access the source Exchange server mailboxes.
- Auto-discover option: ‘Use Autodiscover Email’ resolves any IP address or Exchange Version conflicts. Place a check-mark next to the ‘Use Autodiscover Email’ option and enter the email address and password of your Exchange account to access the Exchange server mailboxes.
Once logged in to the account, the user is presented with 3 options as shown below.
You can select any one of the options to load the mailboxes
- Load Mailboxes automatically: It automatically loads all your mailboxes present on the source server in real time.
- Load Mailboxes Using .CSV file: After successful login, if the automatic mailbox listing has failed to retrieve all the mailboxes then you can load all the mailboxes using .CSV file. If you have chosen Load Mailboxes using .CSV file, then you need to follow the below steps to load the mailboxes from the .CSV file. The detailed steps of listing mailboxes using .CSV file is described here.
- Load Mailboxes from previously stored list: If you choose to Load Mailboxes from previously Stored List then it will display the mailboxes that are already stored.
Step 5. Perform Live Exchange to Live Exchange Migration. From the list of mailboxes, select the ones you wish to migrate to the destination by placing a check-mark. The first migration is always a ‘Full Migration’. Subsequent migrations to the same target are ‘Incremental Migrations‘ which migrate only the newly added items. Duplicates are avoided in the incremental task which saves bandwidth and improves performance. 
Click on the ‘Migrate To Live Exchange‘ button at the bottom to continue.
Step 6. Login to the destination Exchange 2016 server. This step is same as logging in to the source account. You just need to provide your destination account credentials and proceed if you choose the ‘Auto-Discover’ option. However, if you choose the ‘Use Default Connection’ you need to provide the IP Address and select the ‘Exchange Version 2016’ from the drop-down as shown.
- Use Default Connection
- Use Autodiscover Email
On successful login, you will be displayed with the list of mailboxes. Select the required mailboxes and click ‘Continue’.
Map Source and Target Mailboxes. You have three options to map the source and target mailboxes as shown in the image below.
You will be displayed the below window for mapping the source mailboxes to the target. Set the ‘Action’ to ‘Migrate’ and click on ‘Continue’ at the bottom to start the migration operation.
During migration operation, you can view the progress as shown below.Appropriate message will be displayed on the completion of the process. Click the ‘View Log‘ button to view a detailed log of the migration. Login to your destination Exchange server to verify the migrated items such as emails, calendars, contacts etc.
To know more about the Exchange migration please visit: https://www.edbmails.com/pages/exchange-server-migration-tool.html