Migrate E5.5 to E2K already in Native mode

[icvanstra]

Background:

1. One Exchange 2000 Enterprise server
a. Patched
b. Native Mode
c. Dual P3
d. 2Gb Ram
e. Installed by an outside contractor who migrated another E5.5 server from another domain
f. 165 Users

2. One Exchange 5.5 Server
a. Patched
b. Dual P3
c. 1 Gb Ram
d. Built by me when I was a contractor to the company I now work for
e. 125 Users

3. Four locations with five DC’s. One in each remote office and two local.

4. Exchange servers sit local

Task:

1. Start migrating the users from the current exchange 5.5 to the exchange 2000 box. The users will be migrated in sets of 15 to 20 users. Each group migrated will get their own message store since they each have unique restrictions.

2. Secondary task is to separate out the current 165 users into new stores to reduce disaster recovery (company policy is no limits on mailbox size). Note: this task I’m not stressed about…

3. Of course I’m not allowed to have any outages…

Issues:

1. The current E2K box has been up and running for about nine months now and I have not had any problems

2. I have begged and pleaded for training and was told, “You’re really good at figuring things out.”

3. The E5.5 box has been up for about three years and is running fine.

Between the five books sitting in front of me, tek-tips, google, and Microsoft.com I’ve found that I my best bet is to export the data to a .PST and then suck it back in. Then touch each of the clients and redirect them to the new server. Obviously I would like to reduce the amount of desktop touch’s…

Has anyone tried to bring an Exchange 5.5 server into an existing Exchange 2000 Native environment? If so what did you learn and would you please be so kind to impart that wisdom??

Many thanks,
eric

 

[brontosaurus]

are these servers in separate domains and do they have different ORG names? If so, you may be able to use the Exchange Migration Wizard.

 

[icvanstra]

Brontosaurus,

Hope this makes sense:

both servers reside in XYZ.com and the users that are currently on the 2K server all reside in abc.xyz.com.

The ORG names are different.

eric

 

[brontosaurus]

it may work, check this out:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;281584

 

[Digitalcandy]

http://www.msexchange.org

Another excellent resource for your question.

I too had to do a migration. In my case it was Exchange 5.5 on a MS Small Business Server, (worst MS product in my opinion), to an Exchange 2000 server. However, I had ~40 users and they were all on site. I did the .pst thing you described. Took me about 7 hours. I'm sure it's not the most efficient way to do it but I knew it was probably the most reliable.

 

[icvanstra]

Bronto,

Thanks for the Q article

eric