Rackspace Hosted Exchange Email Down Issue Confirmed by Rackspace Officials
Summary: Recently, Rackspace email outage is one of the hot topics nowadays as its hosted Exchange platform has been hit by a ransomware attack. Due to this cyberattack, the services of many Rackspace Exchange users have been affected. Know what all happened in this incident and what are the possible solutions that you can opt for undisrupted email services.
The Texas-based cloud computing service provider Rackspace has suffered a massive hosted Microsoft Exchange environment outage due to a security incident. Initially, a vast number of users across the globe started facing login and connectivity issues. Later on, the company officials announced that are dealing with a security incident.
On 6th December 2022, they announced that it was a ransomware attack which is isolated a portion of Hosted Exchange environment. Since Friday, 2nd December 2022, thousands of users are facing Rackspace hosted Exchange email down issue which in turn hampered the business of many people.
Latest Update Regarding Rackspace Email Outage
For all the users who are experiencing outage issues, Rackspace recommends switching to Microsoft 365 platform. For time being, Rackspace is offering a free Office 365 E1 license to its customers until further notice.
You can either contact their support staff for assistance in migration to the cloud platform. However, many users are being aligned in long queues waiting for being connected to the support team. Unfortunately, most users failed to connect to the Rackspace support team as their ticketing system is currently overloaded due to a Rackspace email outage.
The second option is to go for some automated solution that might help you export your Rackspace data into a disruption-free email client.
Options to Migrate Rackspace Hosted Exchange Data
Since the Rackspace hosted Exchange email is down, the solution suggested by Rackspace officials is to migrate your data to Microsoft 365. However, due to insufficient support assistance, many Rackspace users are stuck and don’t know the next step. Thus, in the following segment, we will provide you with 3 different options that will help you move your Rackspace data to some other email platform.
Option #1: Migrate Hosted Data Directly into Microsoft 365
As suggested by Rackspace itself, the best option is to migrate Rackspace to Office 365 platform. Additionally, it is offering a free Office 365 E1 license to its customers for now. So, you only need to choose a reliable application that will help you migrate your data without any data loss.
As Hosted Exchange creates an OST file to store mailbox data for every user, SysTools OST to Office 365 Migration Tool should be your first choice. The application will migrate all the emails, contacts, calendars, etc. stored in an OST file.
The software comes with a trial version, so you can first try the demo version before spending any money.
Option #2: Generate PST from Rackspace Archive Service (Paid Subscription)
Post Rackspace email outage, some users are using the Rackspace Archive Service which isn’t affected by this outage. This is a paid service and can only be used by customers who have subscribed to this service. In this service, a user can export his / her data into a PST file and then import it into Microsoft 365 account.
Once you have the resultant PST file with you, you can use SysTools Office 365 PST Import Tool. Using this advanced application, users can import a PST file into an individual account or bulk PST files into multiple accounts using Admin Impersonation. Therefore, this single utility serves many purposes for the organization or users.
Option #3: Migrate Resultant Data to Other Email Platforms
Those users who don’t want to transfer their data to Microsoft 365 can use SysTools OST Converter Tool. This tool will help you convert the hosted Exchange mailbox data file (OST) into multiple file formats. Users can either choose the PST export option to export Rackspace emails to PST format.
Additionally, the software also offers export options like MBOX, PDF, EML, MSG, etc. You can choose any of these file formats and get your data exported without losing a single bit of data. Additionally, you need to have Outlook installed on your system to perform the conversion process. The software supports the conversion of orphaned, inaccessible, and corrupt OST files.
Conclusion
Talking about the Rackspace email outage, many users have suffered from this issue and are unable to access their mailbox data. Although Rackspace is investigating this case with a cyber defense firm along with their own IT security team, they still didn’t release any official statement on when this outage will be 100% resolved. Thus, we have listed a few solutions that you can opt for undisrupted email communication.