Exchange Migration

[mojo31]

We will be in the throes of moving our exchange to a new server. I was wondering if there was anyway that mailboxes could be copied while users are still attached to them, or is there a file locking mechanism within which stops this.

Also, I was after a white paper, book etc that would be helpful. We are getting consultancy in, but want to be as tuned in as possible really. Any help would be great.

 

[omni17]

We're in the process of doing a migration ourselves. A good starting point if you are looking for a white paper is the knowledge base article 316886 from microsoft.

you'll need to read it a few times to have it make any sense at all, but i'll sum up what we've done so far.

1) setup a migration server with exchange.
2) from your old exchange server setup replication for all your public folders
3) use the exmerge utility from the exchange service pack to migrate over your mailboxes. When you do this it will not interrupt your prodocution server and people can stil get their mail.
4) use the active directory connector to migrate over distribution lists and special contacts like email addys for pagers. One pitfall from this last part that we are still trying to figure out is that when the email distro lists came across they weren't fully populated with the proper people who should be reciving email.

there are a few things that i would recommend doing before starting the migration.

1) unless you are a small company get exchange enterprise. exchange standard still has the 16 gig information store cap that will be nothing but a headache down the road. We just discovered that we ordered standard and are now upgrading to enterprise because our small company just got a lot bigger.
2) during off hours run the eseutil on your existing exchange server and get the information store as small as possible before starting the migration. in this process also delete any old accounts that you will not need on the new/upgraded server before running the utility.
3) if you don't have an extranal mail store solution contact your DNS provider and you can typically get one setup for about 50 bucks a month. I recommend this only because unless you are going to have your migration server go live while you upgrade your old exchange server this way you won't loose any external email.

On our end we are creating a migration server, moving everything to it. taking down our existing server to upgrade to it then pulling everything back from the migration server to the upgraded server.

these are just random thoughts about what we've done and how we are moving forward. there may be better solutions out there, but all the threads i've read on this have bits and pices of good information. Hopefully i've summed this up pretty well for everyone.

good luck

OMNI17

 

[mojo31]

OMNI, thanks a bundle for this as it will be handy for personal use, as I will migrate 5.5 to 2000 at home. I did forget to say that we are still using Exchange 5.5, just moving it to a more powerful server. Doh!!
I know its only supported until December 04, but its an internal political thing, not my choice.
Sorry for the confusion, will any of what you said hold true, or are these tools found in Exchange 2000 only?

 

[omni17]

check out knowledge base article 155216

I didn't read the article all the way, but then again i had to read the first ref i gave ya like four times before it started to make sense.

I don't think that what i said before will be very applicable to what you want to accomplish. hopefully the KB article i just referenced will point you in the right direction.

Good Luck.

OMNI