migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007

[kyriakos7]

Hi,

I have a problem with a migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. There are 2 different forests, one with Windows 2003 with Exchange 2003 and a new one with Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 sp1.
In the new AD, all the users will be created from scratch, so there is no user migration from the old domain. However, we need to move the mailboxes from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 and the move-mailbox command has a problem if it doesn't find the same user SID in both domains. Also, because there are a lot of mailboxes to be migrated, the option to use .pst EXMERGE utility is not a viable possibility.
Is there any other way to move the mailboxes?

Thanks in advance

 

[SilviaS]

Just a thought
1, do you you a mail archive solution?
2, Emerge all the mailboxes to pst and then using a powershell script merge them into the new database, I reckon so long as the alias names are the same you should be ok.
3. never tried this but can you associate an account with a cross forest trust with a mailbox in another domain? then migrate as per normal maailbox move?

 

[58sniper]

I reckon so long as the alias names are the same you should be ok.

Alias names don't matter in 2007, as you can specify which account to import the data to.

Remember, you can only export data into the 2GB .pst files. If you have mailboxes bigger than that, it's going to be painful.

Pat Richard MVP

 

[SilviaS]

Fair enough but I have just done a mail migration with some pst files upto 6gb in size, put them straight in the mail archive or you can put them straight into the mail account. We where using the alias or samAccount name as the reference point to distinguish between pst files.
Being an MVP surely you have some better suggestions?

 

[58sniper]

exmerge and import-mailbox are probably your only native choices. In theory, you could use some third party tools to handle the migration. But, if you've got, say, <200, the manual method is likely going to be quicker and cheaper.

Pat Richard MVP

 

[Zelandakh]

You'd lose single instance but it would def be faster.

 

[kyriakos7]

Thank you very much for your input. I thought that the only viable option is the import-mailbox command, but I have over 3500 mailboxes to move and it's not gonna be easy to do.
Do you know if there is a third party tool that can copy SID information to new users in the new domain?
Thank you in advance

 

[SilviaS]

Why dont you just migrate the user accounts instead of recreating them? ADMT Tool?

 

[kyriakos7]

It's the decision of the company to create new users and not to migrate the old ones because of the required changes in naming conventions. By the way, I just found out that the ADMT for Windows 2008 has come out and I wonder if anyone knows if it's possible to use the tool in order to copy the SID History to another user.

Thanks

 

[SilviaS]

You can change naming convention using ADMT

 

[kyriakos7]

Thank you for your input. I'm going to try the new ADMT 3.1 and report what I found