Start migration with remote move migration and complete with AzCopy

[nadsurf93]

Hi there.

We are in the process of migrating users from an Exchange 2013 server to Office 365.

The environment is already in a hybrid setup and we are migrating mailboxes.

The issue we are getting is that the migration is going quite slowly... because O365 is using the line that is configured on the Exchange server and its bandwidth is limited.

However, if I use the procedure below:
-Export a user's mailbox to PST.
-Delete the user from Exchange.
-Recreate same user as an Office 365 mailbox.
-Import the PST using AzCopy.
It goes much faster (I can use other lines for that with more bandwidth).

The problem is that when I do this, there is a lot of information that is lost when the user is deleted and recreated, e.g. group memberships, delegation access etc.

I figure that it would be best if I could do this:
-Export a user's mailbox to PST.
-Start the migration using the O365 remove move migration (and keep the user's group membership, delegation access etc.) but without migrating emails.
-Once migration is complete, I can then import the PST into the empty mailbox using AzCopy.

So my query is has anyone tried to do this?
I will test this out soon but I am posting this in case someone else has tried it before.

[#2]

OK, so here is how I did it in case someone else has the same issue:
1. Create an archiving policy, e.g. archive emails older than 3 months.
2. Apply policy on mailboxes, enable archiving and use the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant command to start archiving.
3. Once emails have been moved to the archive mailbox and the primary mailbox's size has decreased, change the archiving policy to "no policy".
4. Export only the archive to PST format using the command below:
New-MailboxExportRequest -mailbox email address removed for privacy reasons -IsArchive -filepath \\<Server IP>\d$\johndoe_archive.pst
5. Upload the archive PST to Azure blob using AzCopy
6. Disable the archive on the user's mailbox.
7. Move only the primary mailbox to Office 365 using remote move migration.
8. Once the migration is complete, reattach the archive PST file to the mailbox.