How to Troubleshoot StalledDueToTarget BigFunnel Issue?

Let’s take a scenario. You’re performing an Exchange Server migration in a Database Availability Group (DAG) setup to another or a newer version. Both servers are compatible and can coexist on the same network. You’ve started the migration batch and it is progressing well. However, when you check the migration batch status, you notice that the migration has halted. You see the error like the given below.

StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel

Identifying the StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel Issue

To identify or possibly have an idea about the issue, you can check the Event Viewer. In the Application section of the logs, you can find the error under the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication Service.

Error: The request has been temporarily postponed because a database has failed over. The Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service will attempt to continue processing the request when capacity becomes available on the new server hosting the database.

The message indicates that during the migration batch, a failover process has occurred on the destination side and this is causing delay in the transfer of mailboxes. It seems that the issue is related to the request to move the mailbox to the destination.

You can look at the specific users who’re complaining about the issue and use their GUID. You can run the following command to get more information about the users facing the error.

Get-Mailbox | where {$_.ExchangeGuid -eq <guid of affected mailbox>}

After running the above command, you will get a warning saying that the specified object has been corrupted or isn’t compatible with Microsoft support requirements, and is in an inconsistent state. It also shows that the Display Name property is invalid and the value contains trailing whitespace.

Solutions to Resolve the StalledDueToTarget_BigFunnel Issue

You can try to remove any trailing whitespaces from the display name or any other field which you have identified from the error message.

For a single user, you can use the below PowerShell command to trim the excess whitespace.

Get-Mailbox -Identity <user> | Foreach {Set-Mailbox -Identity $_.Identity -DisplayName $_.DisplayName.Trim() }

Depending on the property, you can change it accordingly.

Alternatively, if several mailboxes are encountering the issue, you can use the below script to go through each mailbox and remove the whitespaces.

Get-Mailbox | Foreach { Set-Mailbox -Identity $_.Identity -DisplayName $_.DisplayName.Trim() }

After this is complete, it is suggested to re-run the migration batch. If the migration batch is still giving the problems, you might recreate the migration batch from scratch. If this would not work, there might be some other issues in the Exchange Server configuration, network, or operating system.

It is suggested to run a health check on the server to make sure that the server setup is correct and there aren’t any other issues which could be causing such issues. You can download the health check script from the Microsoft website. After downloading the script, execute the below command.

.\HealthChecker.ps1

The script will go through the configuration of the server and check every aspect of the Exchange Server. You can easily see any issues, along with the recommended solutions.

To Conclude

By following the above solutions, you should be able to resolve the StalledDuetoTarget_BigFunnel issue. If the problem still persists, it is suggested to use a third-party EDB to PST converter tool to export and migrate the mailboxes. There are several tools available in the market that can export data from an Exchange Server database to another database or Exchange Online. However, there is one tool which is recommended by most MVPs is Stellar Converter for EDB.

This application can open an online or offline Exchange Server database of any version with no size limit and export the data directly to a live Exchange Server database or migrate Exchange mailboxes to Exchange Online (Microsoft 365). This way the migration is simplified. It can also convert the EDB file into PST and other file formats. It can process user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, user archives, disabled mailboxes, and even public folders. The software also automatically matches the mailboxes from the source to the destination and parallelly exports the mailboxes, making the migration a piece of cake.