Re: Using Exchange 2003 Deployment Tools (incl. ADC) for 2000 upgrade

From: Ed Crowley [MVP] (curspice_at_mvpsnospam.net)
Date: 04/27/04 

Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 22:18:05 -0700

You can move mailboxes between administrative groups when you're in native
mode. If you can get all 21 sites upgraded to Exchange 2003, you can then
switch to native mode and then move all the mailboxes to the central
administrative group.

You can use Exmerge to move the mail from the old sites to the new one, but
that will involve a lot more user hand-holding and administrative effort. 

-- 
Ed Crowley
MVP - Exchange
"Protecting the world from PSTs and brick backups!"
"Greg" <greglara@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:A85B71A4-F709-4EBF-820A-3D9950C4FF58@microsoft.com...
> After researching and testing various migration strategies for upgrading
our organization from Exchange 5.5 on Win2k to Exchange 2003 on Win2k, it
seems that the best method will be to first upgrade our various sites to
Exchange 2000, then consolidate the users to a fewer number of Exchange 2003
servers. I'm interested in getting feedback on this strategy. I'll explain
our situation further.
>
> We have 21 sites in our Exchange organization, one each per regional
office (though some offices do not have an Exchange server). Given that we
only have 450 users in our org, we want to consolidate a number of these
into four larger, regional "hub" sites. All servers are currently running
Windows 2k SP3, are DCs (generally are the only server in a given location),
running Exchange 5.5 SP4.
>
> The problem with upgrading to Exchange comes when it is time to move the
mailboxes to the hub site. We can't do this with the built-in tools, as
cross-site mailbox moves aren't supported. We've investigated 3rd party
migration tools, but they're either way too expensive (for a non-profit),
they're too complex, or they simply don't work (well). As an alternative
migration path, we've decided to start testing based on the following
scenario.
>
> At our headquarters and regional hub sites, the migration will be fairly
straightforward. We'll install a new Exchange 2000 (or Exchange 2003) server
into the site, move that site's mailboxes to the new server and we're good
to go (following the standard procedures for this path - forest prep, domain
prep, ADC, etc.).
>
> The regional sites to be consolidated provide a trickier path however.
We're looking at using the "swing" method: install a 2nd Exchange 2000
server into the site, move the mailboxes from the 5.5 server to this new
server, upgrade the 5.5 box to 2000, then move the mailboxes back. We'd
follow this path throughout the organization until all servers have been
upgraded. At that point, we can go to native mode, and consolidate as
necessary.
>
> Barring all the potential sticky points while upgrading servers (I know
issues will arise), are there any major reasons why we shouldn't go down
this road? It seems to me that we could take it at a pace that's comfortable
for us, and give us a reasonable rollback strategy should an individual
server upgrade not work out. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this.
>
> Thanks,
> Greg