Exchange archive mailbox migration license issue

Hi all,

I have a situation where my environment is in a hybrid state with users ready to migrate. Some users are over 100GB but less 240GB, the Microsoft article on migrating large mailboxes says i have to provision the cloud archive first, but the documentation on this says i need a license.

What's confusing me is if assign a license before they migrate this creates a whole new mailbox and all sorts of screwy thing happen and you have to clean up etc.. so, you instead assign the license after the migration.., but the cloud archive docu. is saying I need to assign a license for the cloud archive first. Has this changed where i can create the Cloud archive on-prem and migrate without needing a mailbox? am i missing something?