Exchange Server Migration


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Hey all

 

Not visited for a while but I figured this is as good a place as any to start with this question

 

I work in a Windows 2003 house with Exchange 2003. Our aim over the next few months is to deploy blades, SAN and W2K12/Exch 2K13 in a new Active Directory infrastructure. I'm still trying to work out the best way of migrating user email addresses from the old domain to the new one without losing any internal messaging functionality.

 

We have a number of email domain and each user may have an address in one or more of these domains. If I create usera@domain1.com on the new Exchange box, I'll lose the ability to send emails to anybody else at domain1.com and they'll no longer be able to email usera unless I do a "big bang" cut-over........or does anybody have any alternate solutions/suggestions

 

Thanks :)

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There is a migration wizard that would work for this.  It will migrate your entire domain over to a new domain.

 

There is a lot to read and a lot of testing involved.

tool: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8377

guide: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19188

 

Once setup properly and tested properly it will make your migration easy.  Or you could just use your existing AD infrastructure and add servers then migrate everyone over. 

 

The guide will cover everything you need to know and do.  I have done this a few times with this tool, it takes a while to get it going because of all of the prep and testing you have to do but migration is fast and easy when you have set it up right.  Follow the guide and you will be fine.

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Thanks for the quick reply - lol, hadn't even looked! Was hoping to find somebody who had done it 

 

Thanks again!

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Once the exchange server has been migrated over to the new domain, you will be able to easily move the mailboxes over to the exchange 2013 server.

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998604%28v=exchg.141%29.aspx

 

There is lots of info out there, just prepare to read a lot and ask a lot of questions.  I won't do it for you, there is too much and too many areas that I would have to be involved in during the process, but I can help guide you.   Do not plan do to this the same day you download and install it, it will fail. Read through the guide and understand what you are reading.  If you get stuck ask.  Some things you can setup live, others you will need to setup test groups and see how it works/doesn't work.  What doesn't work, copy the error and paste it here or google and see how to fix it.  You need to understand trusts, how to setup trusts between domains, and dns setup. Once completed and understood, you will be able to migrate groups and ous.  Users may require a bit more if you want to keep passwords.  Read the guide to find out.

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There isn't a direct upgrade path to Exchange 2013 from 2003.  How many users and why are you creating a new forest?

 

You will want to do a legacy hybrid move to 2010 (forest trust) so mailboxes are available during the migration vs a pure cut.  Then upgrade to 2013.

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You can always do a mailbox database export and import. exmerge will export the enitre exchange 2003 database to individual pst. 

 

once exported, the userid.pst must match that in the new domain  then you can run this powershell command to import all of the psts

 

foreach ($i in (Get-Mailbox)) { New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox $i -FilePath "\\servername\pst\$($i.Alias).pst" }

 

It isn't as nice being that it extracts all mail as individual mail items instead of database mail items, but it would work. (your mail db will be bigger than that in the 2003 exchange server). 

 

Most issues will come out during the testing process.  You must test everything.

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