Exchange 2003 to 2007 Upgrade

[TechMerlin]

I have a client who is upgrading their old 2000 AD / Exchange 2003 server and I am looking for ideas on the Exchange piece.

Another DC has been put in now and the roles moved over, but they still have the Exchange 2003 as their primary (and only) mail server. They have Exchange 2007 licenses etc. so were going to migrate them over to this.

Looking for ideas to best implement this. they had another tech in who was planning on shutting everything down for a weekend plus a day and moving them over. I was thinking more of a build up the new server and migrate them over one (or more) by one.

Thoughts on how to best handle this?

thanks

 

[58sniper]

There is absolutely no reason to "shut everything down". 2003->2007 migrations can happen with little to no down time for mailflow and users. It just takes proper planning.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[TechMerlin]

Agreed,

my outlook was to build a new 2003 server VM, run the setup /PL to prep the domain for legacy Exchange permissions (as ADPrep should have already been done to get the 2003 DC in there), Install Exchange and then move over mailboxes individually in a hot environment.

 

[58sniper]

Assuming you've got the storage and everything, that would work, except I would use 2008 and not 2003.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/