CartIncremental (Delta) Exchange migration
EdbMails Exchange migration software offers Incremental (delta) migration feature, specifically designed to transfer only new or modified items during subsequent migration operations. By tracking and preserving essential metadata, the software intelligently identifies which items have already been migrated, ensuring that no duplicate data—such as emails, contacts, calendars, or tasks—are transferred again. This not only minimizes the migration load but also optimizes bandwidth usage, significantly reducing the time and resources required for the migration process.
The software maintains metadata about each migration session, including message IDs, timestamps, and folder structures, enabling it to perform precise, incremental updates. This feature is especially useful for large-scale migrations or staged migration approaches, where data consistency needs to be maintained across multiple sessions.
How does EdbMails perform incremental Exchange migration?
EdbMails performs full migration initially from the source to the target server. The software securely stores certain metadata (not the entire mailbox) in encrypted form on your local computer. During subsequent migration operations, the software uses the previously migrated metadata and compares the source mailboxes and migrates only the new and modified items. This approach not only ensures your target environment remains fully up-to-date and avoids duplication but also optimizes bandwidth usage and significantly reduces overall migration time.
Migration precautions to prevent duplicate items in target mailboxes
- Ensure that you are using EdbMails for the first time to migrate to the target mailbox. If the messages are already existing on the target (that were not migrated using EdbMails) then a re-migration may cause duplicate items.
- Ensure that you never select the same source and target mailbox. This will result in migration within the same mailbox and it will create duplicate items
- Ensure that you do not select the same mailbox during parallel migration on different computers. In addition, ensure that you migrate the mailboxes from the same computer during re-migration.
- Ensure that you always migrate your mailboxes using EdbMails. If you are using multiple migration methods such as Importing from PST, PowerShell and so on, it may result in duplicate items
Other migration options
- Option 1 : Migrate by individually comparing each item in the target server
The default incremental migration is typically enough to migrate any missing or unsynced items. However, the 'Migrate by individually comparing each item in the target server' option forces EdbMails to check every item that has already been migrated. Keep in mind that enabling this option can slow down the migration process, as it requires a detailed comparison of each individual item.
- Option 2: Migrate without incremental check
This option is helpful if you want to re-migrate mailboxes or folders that have already been transferred, particularly after deleting their contents from the target server. Keep in mind that while the comparison with your previous migration will be skipped, the re-migration will still be done incrementally to prevent any duplicate items.
- Option 3: Remove deleted source items from the target servers
This option is beneficial if you have removed items from the source after the initial migration and wish to delete those same items from the target server during the next migration.
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