Exchange upgrade/migration

[RichieClarke]

I am upgrading our exchange server from exchange 2000 running in a windows 2000 native mode active directory forest to exchange 2003 and eventually a windows 2003 native mode active directory forest.

The only problem is the exchange 2000 server is in a child domain and I would like it to be in the parent domain, so my question is this:

What is the best way to accomplish moving an exchange installation to a parent domain, i.e. e2kserver.child-domain.parent-domain.com to e2kserver.paren-domain.com?

The reason I would like to know this is for two reasons mainly, 1st I would like to decomission the child domain, 2nd I am upgrading exchange and windows to 2k3 so it's probably the best time to do it.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Richie.

 

[nhidalgo]

How many mailboxes and users do you have? I can't think of an easy way to do this. You could exmerge all of the mailboxes to pst. Install exchange in you parent domain and recreate the user accounts and mailboxes, then use exmerge to import the pst files back to your users mailboxes. Then after everything is up and running correctly. Delete the user accounts and mailboxes from the older server and the demote the server.

Nick

 

[RichieClarke]

How about install a new exchange 2003 server in the parent domain - can I then move the users mailbox's to the new server and make the new server their home server? Will that work? It seems like the easiest way to me.

The only other way I can think of is backup the exchange 2k server and uninstall exchange 2k from the child domain then install exchange with the disaster recovery switch in the new domain and restore exchange, but I don't know whether this will work if the box is moving to the parent domain?

Cheers,

Richie.

 

[nhidalgo]

you can only move the mailboxes if the two servers are part of the same exchange org. You may want to try the active directory migration tool

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...b1-5849-4707-9817-8c9773c25c6c&DisplayLang=en

 

[RichieClarke]

Thanks for that, i have another question if thats ok?

Can i install an exchange 2k3 server in the root domain and make it part of the same organisation as the exchange 2000 server in the child domain?

Hope that makes sense.

I was looking at installing the exchange 2k3 server on a new box in the root domain as part of the same exchange organisation so I can move users mailboxes to a new home server. Would it matter that the exchange boxes are in different domains if they're part of the exchange org?

Cheers,

Richie.

 

[nhidalgo]

I'm not sure if that is possible. You may want to search the microsoft knowledge base.

Nick