Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2003 Cross Forest Migration

[tdoma]

Hello everyone, we are trying to migrate our existing Windows 2000 domain/Exchange 2003 (Forest A) environment to a Windows 2003/Exchange 2003 (Forest B) environment. Is anyone aware of any Microsoft tools that we can use to accomplish this? Is this our only option:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/11/02/430289.aspx

When we do the migration we would like to preserve the Outlook profiles, domain password, group membership & accounts for the new environment. We would also like to migrate the exchange data as painlessily as possible. The 2 environment are separated by a firewall. What ports would we want to open to accomplish this?
As a bonus what 3rd party utilities have other folks used in the past?

Thank you for your support.

TD

 

[xmsre]

I think you'll want to use the Quest migration tool

http://www.quest.com/migration-manager-for-exchange/

 

[ntinlin]

Seconded. There are quite a few XC-XC tools but only Quest does the AD and workstation stuff as well.

I've used it in anger a few times, once for XC5.5 to XC2003. Another for exact situation you describe.

Has a few foibles but does the job very well. Only drawback is that they insist you take their consultancy at $2000 per day to get the thing planned and installed.
Last time I used it they also insisted that the company buy MessageStats etc. as well for monitoring after.

But all you really need is the AD and XC migration portions.


As to ports are you going to be doing a point-point VPN tunnel or is there no 'direct' link.
From memory you'll need LDAP, RDP and SMTP access at least but you can lock that down to the individual servers involved. Also best to create a temporary forest trust to minimise the number of admin accounts you need to create.

Neill