Migrate Mailbox Data to a Data File on S3 – Efficient Email Archiving

Overview

Using LegacyFlo you can backup email data from a mailbox to a data file in your own AWS S3 bucket.

Preparation

Before creating migration requests in LegacyFlo, ensure the following:

1. S3 bucket has been created 
2. The S3 registered with LegacyFlo 
3. The source mail server has to be configured to allow mailbox access. 

A. Create an S3 bucket on AWS

Create your S3 bucket in a supported region and allow list and write access to LegacyFlo. The steps for the same are given in the links below:

1. Get an AWS account.
2. Create an S3 bucket in a region supported by Mithi. 
3. Set a temporary bucket policy to allow LegacyFlo to get the name and region of the buckets as mentioned here.
4. When the S3 bucket is used as a source, give list and read access to the objects on the bucket and when the S3 bucket is used as a destination, allow list and write access to LegacyFlo. The steps to do so are mentioned here.

B. Register your S3 bucket as a source/destination S3 bucket on LegacyFlo

For LegacyFlo to upload data to your S3 bucket, it needs to be added to as a destination S3 bucket in LegacyFlo. The steps for doing the same are as given below:

C. Prepare the SOURCE SERVER to allow access to LegacyFlo

Before using LegacyFlo to access email data from source servers using the IMAP protocol or via the mail server API, confirm the following

Prerequisites for all mail servers

1. The emails to be migrated are available in the mailboxes hosted on the source server. Emails that have been downloaded using the POP protocol and deleted from the server, cannot be migrated using this option.
2. You should have the credentials to access the mailboxes to be migrated. You should have the rights and the capability to reset the passwords on the source in order to access the mailboxes OR should be able to delegate the access.
3. If the source server is hosted at your own premises, you have provisioned sufficient Internet bandwidth to transfer the mailbox data. 
4. The source email service provider should allow large emails downloaded via IMAP/API without any throttling. 
5. Your email service provider supports IMAP or API access to mailboxes. You have configured your email server to allow IMAP or API  access as mentioned in the sections below.

Additional prerequisites

Google Workspace - GMail

LegacyFlo can access GMail mailboxes using 3 methods

1. Accessing mailboxes using API (recommended)
2. Accessing mailboxes using domain-wide delegated access via IMAP
3. Accessing mailboxes configured to allow Less Secure IMAP Access

For each of these, the Google Workspace / GMail settings required are different and are given below

Migration method	Instruction
Migration using the GMail API (recommended)	Follow the instructions given here.
Migration using domain-wide delegation for IMAP	For domain-wide delegated access, follow the instructions given here. If using domain-wide delegation for IMAP access (request types GMAILOAUTH-S3-ZIP, GMAILOAUTH-S3-PST, etc), follow the steps given here to enable IMAP access for all the mailboxes to be migrated.
Migration using Less Secure IMAP access	For less secure access via IMAP, follow the instructions given here.

M365/O365

On M365. mailboxes hosted on Outlook can be accessed in two different ways:

1. Delegated API access (recommended)
2. Delegated IMAP access

The steps to prepare for the access is as given below

Step	Instructions
Generating  M365 Graph API access credentials for accessing the mailbox data using IMAP or API	Follow the instructions given here. NOTE: For IMAP access,  get confirmation from the O365 support team that there is no throttling on accessing mail from mailboxes on O365 using the IMAP protocol.
Suppress read receipts	Run the following cmdlet if using IMAP access Set-ImapSettings -SuppressReadReceipt $false cmdlet
Delegate access for O365 mailboxes (to be done for all mailboxes to be migrated)	Follow the instructions given here.

Migrate data to your own S3

Once the preparation is done, you can start the migration by submitting migration requests to LegacyFlo. 

Note: This step has to be executed for each mailbox to be migrated.

The request type used to submit a LegacyFlo request will depend on the source type. The tables below gives the details of the preparation and request parameters for different source types:

Source: O365/M365

O365-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from an O365 mailbox to S3 using IMAP access. The destination file will have EML files in a zipped file. Click here for the details of the request parameters.
O365-S3-PST	Use this request type to backup data from an O365 mailbox to S3 using IMAP access. The destination file will be a PST file. Click here for the details of the request parameters.
M365API-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from an O365 mailbox to S3 using the API access. The destination file will have EML files in a zipped file. Click here for the details of the request parameters.
M365API-S3-PST	Use this request type to backup data from an O365 mailbox to S3 using the API access. The destination file will be a PST file. Click here for the details of the request parameters.

Source:GMail

GMAIL-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from a GMail mailbox accessed using Less Secure Access method. Click here to know the parameters to be specified in the Source and Destination information
GMAILOAUTH-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from a GMail mailbox accessed using domain-wide delegation and IMAP access. The destination file will be a compressed file. Click here to know the parameters to be specified in the Source and Destination information
GMAILOAUTH-S3-PST	Use this request type to backup data from a GMail mailbox accessed using domain-wide delegation and IMAP access. The destination file will be a PST file. Click here to know the parameters to be specified in the Source and Destination information
GMAILAPI-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from a GMail mailbox accessed using domain-wide delegation and API access. The destination file will be a compressed file. Click here to know the parameters to be specified in the Source and Destination information
GMAILAPI-S3-PST	Use this request type to backup data from a GMail mailbox accessed using domain-wide delegation and API access. The destination file will be a PST file. Click here to know the parameters to be specified in the Source and Destination information

Other Sources

MITHI-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from a SkyConnect account to S3. Click here for the details of the request parameters.
YAHOO-S3-ZIP	Use this request type to backup data from an Yahoo mailbox to S3. Click here for the details of the request parameters.

Retrieve data from S3

You can retrieve the data by 

1. Downloading the zip file, either using the AWS console or a tool such as S3 browser.
2. Migrating the data to a SkyConnect or Vaultastic account.