Moving hosted O365 email from GoDaddy to Microsoft with a standalone Azure tenant

Question

Good afternoon! I am working with my customer to migrate their Office 365 Mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams from GoDaddy directly to Microsoft. GoDaddy automates much of this with a high level migration overview of:

1. Approval
2. Creation of a new O365 tenant
3. Provision new licensing
4. GoDaddy migrates everything
5. Verification and testing

It's pretty simple. That said, this specific customer also has a stand-alone Azure environment that the need to retain. They are using email addresses from the same domain we are migrating above. We have created a separate admin account that is NOT tied to the domain just for a contingency plan.

a. Does anyone see any problems with this configuration? Will they still be able to login to this Azure environment with the domain credentials used on O365? (albeit maybe with an updated password?) I'm not clear how the two services are "linked" currently.
b. Any way to link/tie the Azure environment to the new O365 environment once the migration is complete?

Thanks in advance for any clarity!

Answer 1

I hope whoever negotiated with GoDaddy and let them completely destroy M365 is locked away in a basement somewhere. Never to be heard from again.

We've moved a few clients from NoDaddy to clean M365 tenants many times. We usually do a PST export prior to the move and then import once finished. OK for small clients with a few mailboxes. Ideally no mailbox too large.

The best tool we have is powershell. Some notes below. They vary from time to time and every migration is different but you may pick up some tips here. Removing the domain from the GoDaddy M365 portal seems to be a lot more automated now. Notes below are a guide only.

You need to remove all instances of any user or group using the domain before you can remove it.

For large migrations, BitTitan is the preferred method.

For small migrations, you can do manually with PST export and import but new Outlook may cause a challenge.

Create a licensed account and delegate all other mailboxes giving you access in Outlook.

Export each mailbox PST to a file before the cutover.

If loss of mail is absolutely not an option. SMTP mail with a forwarder is an option but a lot of work. The client needs to be aware there may be some time when mail does not exists.

We usually do the migration on a Thursday night late with the Friday to work on any issues.

If you use Powershell

Install-Module MSOnline

Install-Module AzureAD

Import-Module AzureAD

Get-MsolUser -DomainName godaddysucksballs.com.au

Remove-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName "guyinbasement@godaddysucksballs.com.au"

Remove-MsolDomain -DomainName godaddysucksballs.com.au -Force

This should clear up this domain and allow you to add to the new domain. Can take some time but usually pretty quick. If you've set up the new tenant correctly, adding the domain and changing user names is pretty much all you need to do. Make sure the MX record is correct and update any DNS settings that may vary.

Follow up with the client is key. Being available after the change to address issues is important.

Answer 2

A few months ago, I did a Migration from 0365 From GoDaddy to a Standalone O365 tenant and I had some issues.

First, you won't be able to register your domain with the new tenant. You will receive an error message telling you that the domain is already registered in a tenant.

To Goddy remove the relationship, they will delete your account. So you already had your backup.

In my case, I couldn't backup the emails because in GoDaddy I didn't have a role to extract the PSTs, so I did a manual backup of the email.

I had to create the user manually in the new tenant.

Sorry for not bringing good news about my experiences.

I recommend you validate the pain points that I shared with you.

Hope this helps!

Remember to accept the answer if it is helpful.