Exchange Migration

Before I even give the client prices for servers and software, I am trying to get an idea just what will be involved and whether there are any showstoppers in doing the upgrade and migration I have envisioned.

I was pretty alarmed when I saw that there is no direct migration path from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, and that you had to either go to 2000 first or use something called exmerge, which I have never used.

It also sounded like Exchange 2003 is so tied into Active Directory that I’d maybe have to worry about having any remaining workstations that are not running Windows 2000 or XP.

The weird thing is that reading all this material; the KB articles and whitepapers and such, it’s like studying.  Or even a bit like programming or doing accounting work, where it works best if you “zone” and otherwise is marginally productive or doesn’t “stick.”

So.  Anyone have any thoughts on whether such an upgrade might be as painful as I fear?  It’s only a single Exchange 5.5 server, not counting the proxy install for the sake of the internet mail connector.  There are about 50 people, plus a variety of other mailboxes, and residual mailboxes of people no longer there, some of which could perhaps be purged.  The network is NT4, with a PDC and BDC, plus the other, standalone servers, and the Windows 2000 server where Exchange currently resides.  Another goal is to upgrade to Windows 2003 and no longer have NT running the network, but obviously to do so as gracefully as possible.  Ironically, this is probably a bigger change than when I migrated them from Novell to NT, which was easy because they were able to overlap, and because Exchange was new in conjunction with that.  But I digress.

I just don’t want to order a particular server and software combo, only to find that I am unable to port things to it fairly readily.

1. Ok, here’s one end-user’s opinion:

   Exchange SUCKS.  If you can use ANYTHING else, do it.  I hate it hate it hate it.  But I am forced to use it because the IT assholes here can’t get their heads out of their asses.  These are the people who told me IE was superior to FF because “not enough people use FF for you to hear about the problems”.

   Just my 2 cents.

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  06/05  at  03:59 PM

2. I say this, BTW, because since they switched to Exchange for the mail server around here, I can’t get my mail half the time.  It’s not Outlook, it’s the damn server.

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  06/05  at  04:02 PM

3. Okay, I’m not a total expert, (but my husband is, lol).  Doing a migration from 5.5 to 2003 is tricky...Probably the easiest way (Ha!) is to license for 2003, and then do a 2 step migration..first onto 2000, and then from 2000 to 2003.  What is absolutely critical is that you have rock solid backups. 

   If there is any way you can build a test system and do a dry run first, do it.  Generally speaking, you don’t need super duper fancy hardware for the test environment. This way, you can see some of your problem spots (like hey, the backups are corrupt!) and fix them before you go live.

   Also, you probably know this, but when you are building at the os level, partition your drives and make sure that you have the os on one partition (my hubby likes to do about 15 gb for the os) another for program files (like exchange) and then the data on a third partition.  This makes defragging, etc. a lot easier - exchange dbs need lots of maintenance.  Log files fill up fast and then Exchange crashes and corrupts the data..sometimes even your active directory. 

   Good luck!

   p.s. word verfication is during, as in drink lots of coffee and say lots of prayers during an exchange migration.

   Posted by  on  06/05  at  04:03 PM

4. We did the migration just like that about a year ago and it was a rushed affair because our Exchange 5.5 was in an advanced state of leprosy. We used the migration wizard to move the mailboxes without any real problems other than those you can expect from our decaying Exch 5.5 install.

   You’re going to have to create a new 2003 Domain controller first- you know the drill: build an NT BDC on good hardware, then promote to PDC and upgrade to 2003, yaddayaddayadda…

   It was interesting for me- the low-level panic throughout the thing was kinda envigorating .  And, of course, I didn’t have to make the decisions, just make the decisions happen…

   In the end it depends on what you have for resources. There’s no real need to move to 2000 first as 2003’s Interim Mode supports NT just fine

   Posted by John  on  06/06  at  04:56 PM

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