MailStore Server to MailStore SPE Migration

A quality version of this page, approved on 23 March 2017, was based on this revision.

This guide explains how to turn a MailStore Server installation into a MailStore SPE Instance.

As the two products use a slightly different format of the master database (MailStoreMaster.fdb), which contains the configuration, it is not possible to move the entire MailArchive directory of MailStore Server onto a MailStore SPE Instance Host. However, it is possible to transfer all archive stores, which contain the actual messages, by following these simple steps:

Important Notice: The MailStore Server archive must be on Version 7 or higher. If this is not the case, the entire archive must be loaded once into a MailStore Server 7, or higher, before it can be migrated to the SPE, because then some necessary database upgrades will be performed. The MailStore SPE version must be equal or higher than the MailStore Server version where the archive stores were attached to last. When MailStore Server is on version 10 or higher and the customer does not want to share the product key with the service provider, the recovery key can be set to a generated value before migrating.

First create a new MailStore SPE Instance. The instance must not be started yet.
Stop all archiving profiles in MailStore Server, either by setting the execution mode to manual, by disabling all Jobs or by disabling all scheduled tasks.
Stop the MailStore Server service.
Copy all archive store directories from MailStore Server into the instance's Data directory. Do not transfer the MailStoreMaster.fdb, the MailStoreMaster.key and MailStore.xml files. Make sure, there is no remaining .lock file in any of the archive store directories. If there is, the MailStore Server service has not been stopped completely yet. When there are identical folder names, do not merge them, but give them unique names instead.

Important Notice: After this step, do not run any of the archiving profiles in MailStore Server again, otherwise you might risk that emails are not getting archived by the MailStore SPE Instance (i.e. when a profile contains automatic deletion rules).

Start the MailStore SPE Instance.
Attach the archive stores that were previously transferred to the newly created instance. In case the archive store is migrated from MailStore Server 10 or newer the recovery key (product key or generated value) ofthe MailStore Server installation is required.
Set the state of one archive store to Current.

Additional Steps

Depending on the previous configuration of MailStore Server, the following tasks are to be done to configure the MailStore SPE Instance accordingly:

Create users, either manually or by synchronizing with a directory service.
Configure compliance settings.
Create archiving profiles.
Verify the rest of the configuration, such as search index configuration, export profiles, permissions, etc.