exchange 5.5 to 2000 planning question

[fritz101]

I'm planning an upgrade of our Exchange environment from 5.5 to 2000. There are so many strategies for doing this that I wondered if someone had some advice for my particular situation, as all of the options have confused me. We're a pretty small company, at about 40 employees. Downtime is not a big deal, as long as I can get things done overnight or on a weekend day.
Previously we had an NT domain. I upgraded the PDC to W2K and set up Active Directory with the same name, and added 2 additional 2000 DC's.
The new Exchange server machine is a different machine than our current 5.5 server (which will be retired after transition). Unfortunately, the Exchange 5.5 server is running NT4 server and is a BDC, so my Active Directory servers are not in native mode. Changing the Exchange organization name is no big deal either, since we only run one server without any connectors.

Here is what I'm thinking (with questions):
- Demote the Exchange 5.5 server from BDC to regular server and switch to native mode (is this possible? Is an Exchange 5.5 server required to be a BDC?)
- Run the Active Directory Connector to migrate the Exchange users to AD mail-enabled users (is this possible with with my Exchange 5.5 server running NT? Will it create duplicate user accounts in AD since everyone is already there from the upgrade process?)
- Install Exchange 2000 on the new server and run the migration tool to move the mailboxes, etc.

Thats the major steps I expect. I'm confused about the problems of the 5.5 machine being NT, since my domain is actually AD.

Thanks for any responses!

 

[computerhighguy]

You will be happy once you get the system upgraded. Doing everything through AD Users and Computers is very nice!!!

Your answers:

1) You cannot demote a BDC. You can however, blow it away and reinstall. It isn't like Winndows 2000 AD. Exchange 5.5 does not have to run on a domain controller and in fact probably shouldn't be unless you have a very small organizatino or a really good reason to do so. I don't recall that you have to have the AD in native mode during the migration process (though it has been quite a while since I last did a migration).
2) I don't think this will be an issue, but it is really tough. To be honest with you, I would ghost the box to DVD or a network drive. backup the Exchange 5.5 database, Reinstall NT and Exchange 5.5 and restore the database. So that you can take the BDC issue out of the equation.
3) Go ahead and migrate.

Make sure you run the prerequisites to extend the AD schema for Exchange 2000. Read up on the SMTP configuration for Exchange 2000. No Internet Mail Connector there. Do some lookups on how to prevent your exchange 2000 system from being an open mail relay. i stuggled with this for a bit. But I loved it once I got to it. Good luck!

 

[zoeythecat]

Another suggestion, since you have a small environment of about 40 mailboxes. Why not exmerge the mailboxes to pst files (via the Exmerge Utility). Then just install Exchange 2000 on the new server and then import the mailboxes from the pst files. So the order I would do it (and not discrediting computerhighguy. Just another method).

(1) Export mailboxes to pst files via Exmerge
(2) Install Exchange 2000 on the new server.
Make sure you install this on a Member Server
not a Domain Controller.
(3) Import mailboxes via the Exmerge
(4) Enable the mailboxes. they will all come over
disabled.
(5) Switch to Windows2000 Native Mode once all your servers
have been upgraded to Windows2000
(6) Switch Exchange 2000 to Native Mode

 

[fritz101]

Wow, thanks for the feedback, folks. Your posts both have me thinking a lot. I was getting quite concerned with the thought of having to rebuild my 5.5 server because I've had several problems with the exchange information store. I'd rather not be mess around with it too much in fear of making it worse. On the other hand, using the Migration tool sounds very helpful and something I'd like to be able to familiarize myself with (always thinking about the resume). And now the .pst method sounds easiest (although I saw in KB 327304 that you can't reply to email from users on the old server).
In any case, I'm weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. I would really like to go ahead and set up Exchange 2000 in the site and test each method with a single mailbox. Is this advisable and/or possible?
Thanks again