Moving Exchange

[golson]

My company has a exchange 5.5 server running on NT. We purchased a new server that runs windows 2000 and Exchange 2000. We are not yet ready to move to an Active directory domain. I need to get my Exchange 5.5 off of the old server and put it on the new 2000 server. What would be the best way to do this? Can I set up exchange 2000 without AD or do I need to set up the 2000 server with 5.5 and copy over the exchsrvr directory and upgrade to Exchange 2000 when we are ready for AD?

Thanks in advance,

Golson

 

[AlexIT]

In my (limited) experience Exchange 2000 requires AD, that there really aren't 'Mailboxes' in 2000 but associated containers in the AD database where the mail is stored for each user. Someone correct me please if I am wrong. So no Exchange 2000 unless you have a Win2K AD server somewhere.
Install 5.5 onto your new machine, use Exmerge utility to make .pst files of each mailbox on the old server and put them into new mailboxes created on the new server. Takes about 30 minutes per 100MB mailbox...

Alex

 

[golson]

When I install 5.5 on the new server I read in MS article Q155216 that I could copy the exchsrvr directory from the old 5.5 server to the new as long as I use the same name. Does this procedure work? Is there any further config needed after this is done?

Thanks,

Golson

 

[AlexIT]

Q155216 works fine in most cases. You need to run isinteg utility before bringing the new server online, but you should do this often anyway. I usually wind up changing computer names, so I have more experience using exmerge utility.

Alex

 

[golson]

Please forgive my inexperience, but what is isinteg and what is the procedure for running it.

 

[AlexIT]

'isinteg' is the information store integrity verification utility. It has quite a lot of command line options, the verify and repair ones are listed in Q155216.

Alex

 

[soonerland]

You should only need to run the isinteg with the "-patch" switch. This only takes a short amount of time. I have moved several exchange servers over to Win2K this way.